\^^\\\\^^^^^^A\\^\\^         WSS'^X     XVN^X-^^ 


»4 


^ 


V 


I     K-\    i    \ 


•^  'iw^^ 


^  <v 


UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 
AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

AND       OTHER      ESSAYS 
By  gilbert  K.  CHESTERTON 


BONI     AND      LIVERIGHT 
New  York  1917 


Copyright,  1917,  by 
Boni  &  Liveright,  Inc. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


H  A  SONG  OF  SWORDS 

"A  drove  of  cattle  came  into  a  village  called  Swords; 
and  was  stopped  by  the  rioters." — Daily  Paper. 


(^ 


^     In  the  place  called  Swords  on  the  Irish  road 
'"      It  is  told  for  a  new  renown 
«o      How  we  held  the  horns  of  the  cattle,  and  how 
^      We  will  hold  the  horns  of  the  devils  now 
**      Ere  the  lord  of  hell  with  the  horn  on  his  brow 
Is  crowned  in  Dublin  town. 


^  UJ 

>  z> 


$CD 


Light  in  the  East  and  light  in  the  West, 
And  light  on  the  cruel  lords. 
On  the  souls  that  suddenly  all  men  knew. 
And  the  green  flag  flew  and  the  red  flag  flew, 
I  ^   And  many  a  wheel  of  the  world  stopped,  too. 
When  the  cattle  were  stopped  at  Swords. 

Be  they  sinners  or  less  than  saints 

That  smite  in  the  street  for  rage. 

We  know  where  the  shame  shines  bright;  we 

know 
You  that  they  smite  at,  you  their  foe. 
Lords  of  the  lawless  wage  and  low, 

This  is  your  lawful  wage. 


S7ZG03 


A  SONG  OF  SWORDS 

You  pinched  a  child  to  a  torture  price 
That  you  dared  not  name  in  words ; 
So  black  a  jest  was  the  silver  bit 
That  your  own  speech  shook  for  the  shame  of  it. 
And  the  coward  was  plain  as  a  cow  they  hit 
When  the  cattle  have  strayed  at  Swords. 

The  wheel  of  the  torrent  of  wives  went  round 
To  break  men's  brotherhood ; 
You  gave  the  good  Irish  blood  to  grease 
The  clubs  of  your  country's  enemies; 
You  saw  the  brave  man  beat  to  the  knees : 
And  you  saw  that  it  was  good. 

The  rope  of  the  rich  is  long  and  long — 

The  longest  of  hangmen's  cords ; 

But  the  kings  and  crowds  are  holding  their 

breath, 
In  a  giant  shadow  o'er  all  beneath 
Where  God  stands  holding  the  scales  of  Death 

Between  the  cattle  and  Swords. 

Haply  the  lords  that  hire  and  lend 
The  lowest  of  all  men's  lords, 
Who  sell  their  kind  like  kine  at  a  fair. 
Will  find  no  head  of  their  cattle  there ; 
But  faces  of  men  where  cattle  were : 
Faces  of  men — and  Swords. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A  Song  of  Swords 
Utopia  of  Usurers 

I     Art  and  Advertisement i 

II     Letters  and  the  New  Laureates 9 

III  Unbusinesslike  Business i8 

IV  The  War  on  Holidays 25 

V    The  Church  of  the  Servile  State     ....  33 

VI     Science  and  the  Eugenists 38 

VII     The  Evolution  of  the  Prison 45 

VIII     The  Lash  for  Labour 53 

IX    The  Mask  of  Socialism 64 

The  Escape 71 

The  New  Raid 73 

The  New  Name 79 

A  Workman's  History  of  England     ....  89 

The  French  Revolution  and  the  Irish      .    .  98 

Liberalism:  a  Sample 107 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Fatigue  of  Fleet  Street     ,.,...  115 

The  Amnesty  for  Aggression     .     .     .     .    .     .  123 

Revive  the   Court  Jester 132 

The  Art  of  Missing  the  Point 143 

The   Servile   State  Again 151 

The  Empire  of  the  Ignorant 159 

The  Symbolism  of  Krupp        167 

The  Tov^^er  of  Bebel 174 

A  Real  Danger 183 

The  Dregs  of  Puritanism 193 

The  Tyranny  of  Bad  Journalism        .     .     .     .  200 

The  Poetry  of  the  Revolution 209 


UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 


UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 
I 

Art  and  Advertisement 

I  PROPOSE,  subject  to  the  patience  of  the 
reader,  to  devote  two  or  three  articles  to 
prophecy.  Like  all  healthy-minded  prophets, 
sacred  and  profane,  I  can  only  prophesy  when 
I  am  in  a  rage  and  think  things  look  ugly 
for  everybody.  And  like  all  healthy-minded 
prophets,  I  prophesy  in  the  hope  that  my 
prophecy  may  not  come  true.  For  the  predic- 
tion made  by  the  true  soothsayer  is  like  the 
warning  given  by  a  good  doctor.  And  the  doc- 
tor has  really  triumphed  when  the  patient  he 
condemned  to  death  has  revived  to  life.  The 
threat  is  justified  at  the  very  moment  when  it 

1 


2  UTOPIA  OF  USUEERS 

is  falsified.  Now  I  have  said  again  and  again 
(and  I  shall  continue  to  say  again  and  again  on 
all  the  most  inappropriate  occasions)  that  we 
must  hit  Capitalism,  and  hit  it  hard,  for  the 
plain  and  definite  reason  that  it  is  growing 
stronger.  Most  of  the  excuses  which  serve  the 
capitalists  as  masks  are,  of  course,  the  excuses 
of  hypocrites.  They  lie  when  they  claim  phil- 
anthropy; they  no  more  feel  any  particular 
love  of  men  than  Albu  felt  an  affection  for 
Chinamen.  They  lie  when  they  say  they  have 
reached  their  position  through  their  own  or- 
ganising ability.  They  generally  have  to  pay 
men  to  organise  the  mine,  exactly  as  they  pay 
men  to  go  down  it.  They  often  lie  about  their 
present  wealth,  as  they  generally  lie  about  their 
past  poverty.  But  when  they  say  that  they 
are  going  in  for  a  "constructive  social  policy," 
they  do  not  lie.  They  really  are  going  in  for 
a  constructive  social  policy.  And  we  must  go 
in  for  an  equally  destructive  social  policy ;  and 


ART  AND  ADVERTISEMENT  3 

destroy,  while  it  is  still  half -constructed,  the 
accursed  thing  which  they  construct. 

The  Example  of  the  Arts 

Now  I  propose  to  take,  one  after  another, 
certain  aspects  and  departments  of  modern  life, 
and  describe  what  I  think  they  will  be  like  in 
this  paradise  of  plutocrats,  this  Utopia  of  gold 
and  brass  in  which  the  great  story  of  England 
seems  so  likely  to  end.  I  propose  to  say  what 
I  think  our  new  masters,  the  mere  millionaires, 
will  do  with  certain  human  interests  and  insti- 
tutions, such  as  art,  science,  jurisprudence,  or 
religion — unless  we  strike  soon  enough  to 
prevent  them.  And  for  the  sake  of  argument 
I  will  take  in  this  article  the  example  of  the 
arts. 

Most  people  have  seen  a  picture  called 
"Bubbles,"  which  is  used  for  the  advertisement 
of  a  celebrated  soap,  a  small  cake  of  which  is 
introduced   into   the   pictorial   design.     And 


4  UTOPIA  OF  USUEERS 

anybody  with  an  instinct  for  design  (the  cari- 
caturist of  the  Daily  Herald,  for  instance), 
will  guess  that  it  was  not  originally  a  part  of 
the  design.  He  will  see  that  the  cake  of  soap 
destroys  the  picture  as  a  picture;  as  much  as 
if  the  cake  of  soap  had  been  used  to  scrub  off 
the  paint.  Small  as  it  is,  it  breaks  and  con- 
fuses the  whole  balance  of  objects  in  the  com- 
position. I  offer  no  judgment  here  upon 
Millais's  action  in  the  matter ;  in  fact,  I  do  not 
know  what  it  was.  The  important  point  for 
me  at  the  moment  is  that  the  picture  was  not 
painted  for  the  soap,  but  the  soap  added  to  the 
picture.  And  the  spirit  of  the  corrupting 
change  which  has  separated  us  from  that  Vic- 
torian epoch  can  be  best  seen  in  this :  that  the 
Victorian  atmosphere,  with  all  its  faults,  did 
not  permit  such  a  style  of  patronage  to  pass  as 
a  matter  of  course.  Michael  Angelo  may  have 
been  proud  to  have  helped  an  emperor  or  a 
pope;  though,  indeed,  I  think  he  was  prouder 


ART  AND  ADVERTISEMENT  5 

than  they  were  on  his  own  account.  I  do  not 
believe  Sir  John  Millais  was  proud  of  having 
helped  a  soap-boiler.  I  do  not  say  he  thought 
it  wrong;  but  he  was  not  proud  of  it.  And 
that  marks  precisely  the  change  from  his  time 
to  our  own.  Our  merchants  have  really 
adopted  the  style  of  merchant  princes.  They 
have  begun  openly  to  dominate  the  civilisation 
of  the  State,  as  the  emperors  and  popes  openly 
dominated  in  Italy.  In  Millais's  time,  broadly 
speaking,  art  was  supposed  to  mean  good  art ; 
advertisement  was  supposed  to  mean  inferior 
art.  The  head  of  a  black  man,  painted  to  ad- 
vertise somebody's  blacking,  could  be  a  rough 
symbol,  like  an  inn  sign.  The  black  man  had 
only  to  be  black  enough.  An  artist  exhibiting 
the  picture  of  a  negro  was  expected  to  know 
that  a  black  man  is  not  so  black  as  he  is  painted. 
He  was  expected  to  render  a  thousand  tints  of 
grey  and  brown  and  violet :  for  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  black  man  just  as  there  is  no  such 


6  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

thing  as  a  white  man.     A  fairly  clear  line 
separated  advertisement  from  art. 

The  First  Effect 

I  should  say  the  first  effect  of  the  triumph 
of  the  capitalist  (if  we  allow  him  to  triumph) 
will  be  that  that  line  of  demarcation  will  en- 
tirely disappear.  There  will  be  no  art  that 
might  not  just  as  well  be  advertisement.  I  do 
not  necessarily  mean  that  there  will  be  no  good 
art;  much  of  it  might  be,  much  of  it  already  is, 
very  good  art.  You  may  put  it,  if  you  please, 
in  the  form  that  there  has  been  a  vast  improve- 
ment in  advertisements.  Certainly  there  would 
be  nothing  surprising  if  the  head  of  a  negro 
advertising  Somebody's  Blacking  nowadays 
were  finished  with  as  careful  and  subtle  colours 
as  one  of  the  old  and  superstitious  painters 
would  have  wasted  on  the  negro  king  who 
brought  gifts  to  Christ.  But  the  improvement 
of  advertisements  is  the  degradation  of  artists. 


AET  AND  ADVERTISEMENT  7 

It  is  their  degradation  for  this  clear  and  vital 
reason:  that  the  artist  will  work,  not  only  to 
please  the  rich,  but  only  to  increase  their  riches ; 
which  is  a  considerable  step  lower.  After  all, 
it  was  as  a  human  being  that  a  pope  took  pleas- 
ure in  a  cartoon  of  Raphael  or  a  prince  took 
pleasure  in  a  statuette  of  Cellini.  The  prince 
paid  for  the  statuette;  but  he  did  not  expect 
the  statuette  to  pay  him.  It  is  my  impression 
that  no  cake  of  soap  can  be  found  any- 
where in  the  cartoons  which  the  Pope  ordered 
of  Raphael.  And  no  one  who  knows  the  small- 
minded  cynicism  of  our  plutocracy,  its  secrecy, 
its  gambling  spirit,  its  contempt  of  conscience, 
can  doubt  that  the  artist-advertiser  will  often 
be  assisting  enterprises  over  which  he  will  have 
no  moral  control,  and  of  which  he  could  feel  no 
moral  approval.  He  will  be  working  to  spread 
quack  medicines,  queer  investments;  and  will 
work  for  JNIarconi  instead  of  Medici.  And  to 
this  base  ingenuity  he  will  have  to  bend  the 


8  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

proudest  and  purest  of  the  virtues  of  the  intel- 
lect, the  power  to  attract  his  brethren,  and  the 
noble  duty  of  praise.  For  that  picture  by 
Millais  is  a  very  allegorical  picture.  It  is  al- 
most a  prophecy  of  what  uses  are  awaiting  the 
beauty  of  the  child  unborn.  The  praise  will  be 
of  a  kind  that  may  correctly  be  called  soap; 
and  the  enterprises  of  a  kind  that  may  truly  be 
described  as  Bubbles. 


II 

Letters  and  the  New  Laureates 

In  these  articles  I  only  take  two  or  three 
examples  of  the  first  and  fundamental  fact  of 
our  time.  I  mean  the  fact  that  the  capitalists 
of  our  community  are  becoming  quite  openly 
the  kings  of  it.  In  my  last  (and  first)  article, 
I  took  the  case  of  Art  and  advertisement.  I 
pointed  out  that  Art  must  be  growing  worse — 
merely  because  advertisement  is  growing  bet- 
ter. In  those  days  Millais  condescended  to 
Pears'  soap.  In  these  days  I  really  think  it 
would  be  Pears  who  condescended  to  Millais. 
But  here  I  turn  to  an  art  I  know  more  about, 
that  of  journalism.  Only  in  my  case  the  art 
verges  on  artlessness. 

9 


10  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

The  great  difficulty  with  the  English  lies  in 
the  absence  of  something  one  may  call  demo- 
cratic imagination.  We  find  it  easy  to  realise 
an  individual,  but  very  hard  to  realise  that  the 
great  masses  consist  of  individuals.  Our  system 
has  been  aristocratic:  in  the  special  sense  of 
there  being  only  a  few  actors  on  the  stage.  And 
the  back  scene  is  kept  quite  dark,  though  it  is 
really  a  throng  of  faces.  Home  Rule  tended 
to  be  not  so  much  the  Irish  as  the  Grand  Old 
Man.  The  Boer  War  tended  not  to  be  so  much 
South  Africa  as  simply  "Joe."  And  it  is  the 
amusing  but  distressing  fact  that  every  class  of 
political  leadership,  as  it  comes  to  the  front  in 
its  turn,  catches  the  rays  of  this  isolating  lime- 
light; and  becomes  a  small  aristocracy.  Cer- 
tainly no  one  has  the  aristocratic  complaint  so 
badly  as  the  Labour  Party.  At  the  recent 
Congress,  the  real  difference  between  Larkin 
and  the  English  Labour  leaders  was  not  so 
much  in  anything  right  or  wrong  in  what  he 


LETTERS  AND  THE  NEW  LAUREATES  11 

said,  as  in  something  elemental  and  even  mys- 
tical in  the  way  he  suggested  a  mob.  But  it 
must  be  plain,  even  to  those  who  agree  with 
the  more  official  policy,  that  for  Mr.  Havelock 
Wilson  the  principal  question  was  Mr.  Have- 
lock Wilson ;  and  that  Mr.  Sexton  was  mainly 
considering  the  dignity  and  fine  feelings  of 
Mr.  Sexton.  You  may  say  they  were  as  sensi- 
tive as  aristocrats,  or  as  sulky  as  babies;  the 
point  is  that  the  feeling  was  personal.  But 
Larkin,  like  Danton,  not  only  talks  like  ten 
thousand  men  talking,  but  he  also  has  some  of 
the  carelessness  of  the  colossus  of  Arcis ;  "Que 
mon  nom  soit  fletri,  que  la  France  soit  libra." 

A  Dance  of  Degradation 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  this  respecting  of 
persons  has  led  all  the  other  parties  a  dance 
of  degradation.  We  ruin  South  Africa  be- 
cause it  would  be  a  slight  on  Lord  Gladstone 
to  save  South  Africa.    We  have  a  bad  army. 


12  UTOPIA  OF  USUEEES 

because  it  would  be  a  snub  to  Lord  Haldane 
to  have  a  good  army.  And  no  Tory  is  allowed 
to  say  "Marconi"  for  fear  Mr.  George  should 
say  "Kynoch."  But  this  curious  personal  ele- 
ment, with  its  appalling  lack  of  patriotism,  has 
appeared  in  a  new  and  curious  form  in  an- 
other department  of  life;  the  department  of 
literature,  especially  periodical  literature. 
And  the  form  it  takes  is  the  next  example  I 
shall  give  of  the  way  in  which  the  capitalists 
are  now  appearing,  more  and  more  openly,  as 
the  masters  and  princes  of  the  community. 

I  will  take  a  Victorian  instance  to  mark  the 
change;  as  I  did  in  the  case  of  the  advertise- 
ment of  "Bubbles."  It  was  said  in  my  child- 
hood, by  the  more  apoplectic  and  elderly  sort 
of  Tory,  that  W.  E.  Gladstone  was  only  a  Free 
Trader  because  he  had  a  partnership  in  Gil- 
bey's  foreign  wines.  This  was,  no  doubt,  non- 
sense; but  it  had  a  dim  symbolic,  or  mainly 
prophetic,  truth  in  it.    It  was  true,  to  some 


LETTERS  AND  THE  NEW  LAUREATES  13 

extent  even  then,  and  it  has  been  increasingly 
true  since,  that  the  statesman  was  often  an  ally 
of  the  salesman;  and  represented  not  only  a 
nation  of  shopkeepers,  but  one  particular  shop. 
But  in  Gladstone's  time,  even  if  this  was  true, 
it  was  never  the  whole  truth ;  and  no  one  would 
have  endured  it  being  the  admitted  truth.  The 
politician  was  not  solely  an  eloquent  and  per- 
suasive bagman  travelling  for  certain  business 
men ;  he  was  bound  to  mix  even  his  corruption 
with  some  intelligible  ideals  and  rules  of  pol- 
icy. And  the  proof  of  it  is  this:  that  at  least 
it  was  the  statesman  who  bulked  large  in  the 
public  eye;  and  his  financial  backer  was  en- 
tirely in  the  background.  Old  gentlemen 
might  choke  over  their  port,  with  the  moral 
certainty  that  the  Prime  Minister  had  shares 
in  a  wine  merchant's.  But  the  old  gentleman 
would  have  died  on  the  spot  if  the  wine  mer- 
chant had  really  been  made  as  important  as 
the  Prime  Minister.    If  it  had  been  Sir  Wal- 


14  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

ter  Gilbey  whom  Disraeli  denounced,  or  Punch 
caricatured;  if  Sir  Walter  Gilbey 's  favourite 
collars  (with  the  design  of  which  I  am  unac- 
quainted) had  grown  as  large  as  the  wings  of 
an  archangel;  if  Sir  Walter  Gilbey  had  been 
credited  with  successfully  eliminating  the  Brit- 
ish Oak  with  his  little  hatchet;  if,  near  the 
Temple  and  the  Courts  of  Justice,  our  sight 
was  struck  by  a  majestic  statue  of  a  wine  mer- 
chant ;  or  if  the  earnest  Conservative  lady  who 
threw  a  gingerbread-nut  at  the  Premier  had 
directed  it  towards  the  wine  merchant  instead, 
the  shock  to  Victorian  England  would  have 
been  very  great  indeed. 

Haloes  for  Employers 

Now  something  very  like  that  is  happening; 
the  mere  wealthy  employer  is  beginning  to 
have  not  only  the  power  but  some  of  the  glory. 
I  have  seen  in  several  magazines  lately,  and 
magazines  of  a  high  class,  the  appearance  of  a 


LETTERS  AND  THE  NEW  LAUREATES  15 

new  kind  of  article.  Literary  men  are  being 
employed  to  praise  a  big  business  man  person- 
ally, as  men  used  to  praise  a  king.  They  not 
only  find  political  reasons  for  the  commercial 
schemes — that  they  have  done  for  some  time 
past — they  also  find  moral  defences  for  the 
commercial  schemers.  They  describe  the  capi- 
tahst's  brain  of  steel  and  heart  of  gold  in  a 
way  that  Englishmen  hitherto  have  been  at 
least  in  the  habit  of  reserving  for  romantic  fig- 
ures like  Garibaldi  or  Gordon.  In  one  excel- 
lent magazine  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor,  who,  when 
he  likes,  can  write  on  letters  like  a  man  of  let- 
ters, has  some  purple  pages  in  praise  of  Sir 
Joseph  Lyons — ^the  man  who  runs  those  tea- 
shop  places.  He  incidentally  brought  in  a  de- 
lightful passage  about  the  beautiful  souls  pos- 
sessed by  some  people  called  Salmon  and 
Gluckstein.  I  think  I  like  best  the  passage 
where  he  said  that  Lyons's  charming  social  ac- 
complishments included  a  talent  for  "imitat- 


16  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

ing  a  Jew."  The  article  is  accompanied  with 
a  large  and  somewhat  leering  portrait  of  that 
shopkeeper,  which  makes  the  parlour-trick  in 
question  particularly  astonishing.  Another 
literary  man,  who  certainly  ought  to  know  bet- 
ter, wrote  in  another  paper  a  piece  of  hero- 
worship  about  Mr.  Selfridge.  No  doubt  the 
fashion  will  spread,  and  the  art  of  words,  as 
polished  and  pointed  by  Ruskin  or  Meredith, 
will  be  perfected  yet  further  to  explore  the 
labyrinthine  heart  of  Harrod;  or  compare  the 
simple  stoicism  of  Marshall  with  the  saintly 
charm  of  Snelgrove. 

Any  man  can  be  praised — and  rightly 
praised.  If  he  only  stands  on  two  legs  he  does 
something  a  cow  cannot  do.  If  a  rich  man  can 
manage  to  stand  on  two  legs  for  a  reasonable 
time,  it  is  called  self-control.  If  he  has  only 
one  leg,  it  is  called  (with  some  truth)  self-sac- 
rifice. I  could  say  something  nice  (and  true) 
about  every  man  I  have  ever  met.    Therefore, 


LETTEKS  AND  THE  NEW  LAUREATES  17 

I  do  not  doubt  I  could  find  something  nice 
about  Lyons  or  Self  ridge  if  I  searched  for  it. 
But  I  shall  not.  The  nearest  postman  or  cab- 
man will  provide  me  with  just  the  same  brain 
of  steel  and  heart  of  gold  as  these  unlucky- 
lucky  men.  But  I  do  resent  the  whole  age  of 
patronage  being  revived  under  such  absurd  pa- 
trons; and  all  poets  becoming  court  poets,  un- 
der kings  that  have  taken  no  oath,  nor  led  us 
into  any  battle. 


Ill 

Unbusinesslike  Business 

The  fairy  tales  we  were  all  taught  did  not, 
like  the  history  we  were  all  taught,  consist  en- 
tirely of  lies.  Parts  of  the  tale  of  "Puss  in 
Boots"  or  "Jack  and  the  Beanstalk"  may 
strike  the  realistic  eye  as  a  little  unlikely  and 
out  of  the  common  way,  so  to  speak ;  but  they 
contain  some  very  solid  and  very  practical 
truths.  For  instance,  it  may  be  noted  that 
both  in  "Puss  in  Boots"  and  "Jack  and  the 
Beanstalk,"  if  I  remember  aright,  the  ogre  was 
not  only  an  ogre  but  also  a  magician.  And  it 
will  generally  be  found  that  in  all  such  popu- 
lar narratives,  the  king,  if  he  is  a  wicked  king, 
is  generally  also  a  wizard.    Now  there  is  a  very 

18 


UNBUSINESSLIKE  BUSINESS       19 

vital  human  truth  enshrined  in  this.  Bad  gov- 
ernment, hke  good  government,  is  a  spiritual 
thing.  Even  the  tyrant  never  rules  by  force 
alone ;  but  mostly  by  fairy  tales.  And  so  it  is 
with  the  modern  tyrant,  the  great  employer. 
The  sight  of  a  millionaire  is  seldom,  in  the  or- 
dinary sense,  an  enchanting  sight:  neverthe- 
less he  is  in  his  way  an  enchanter.  As  they  say 
in  the  gushing  articles  about  him  in  the  maga- 
zines, he  is  a  fascinating  personality.  So  is  a 
snake.  At  least  he  is  fascinating  to  rabbits; 
and  so  is  the  millionaire  to  the  rabbit-witted 
sort  of  people  that  ladies  and  gentlemen  have 
allowed  themselves  to  become.  He  does,  in  a 
manner,  cast  a  spell,  such  as  that  which  im- 
prisoned princes  and  princesses  under  the 
shapes  of  falcons  or  stags.  He  has  truly 
turned  men  into  sheep,  as  Circe  turned  them 
into  swine. 

Now,  the  chief  of  the  fairy  tales,  by  which 
he  gains  this  glory  and  glamour,  is  a  certain 


20  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

hazy  association  he  has  managed  to  create  be- 
tween the  idea  of  bigness  and  the  idea  of  prac- 
ticality. Numbers  of  the  rabbit-witted  ladies 
and  gentlemen  do  really  think,  in  spite  of 
themselves  and  their  experience,  that  so  long 
as  a  shop  has  hundreds  of  different  doors  and 
a  great  many  hot  and  unhealthy  underground 
departments  (they  must  be  hot;  this  is  very 
important),  and  more  people  than  would  be 
needed  for  a  man-of-war,  or  crowded  cathe- 
dral, to  say:  "This  way,  madam,"  and  "The 
next  article,  sir,"  it  follows  that  the  goods  are 
good.  In  short,  they  hold  that  the  big  busi- 
nesses are  businesslike.  They  are  not.  Any 
housekeeper  in  a  truthful  mood,  that  is  to  say, 
any  housekeeper  in  a  bad  temper,  will  tell  you 
that  they  are  not.  But  housekeepers,  too,  are 
human,  and  therefore  inconsistent  and  com- 
plex ;  and  they  do  not  always  stick  to  truth  and 
bad  temper.  They  are  also  affected  by  this 
queer  idolatry  of  the  enormous  and  elaborate; 


UNBUSINESSLIKE  BUSINESS       21 

and  cannot  help  feeling  that  anything  so  com- 
plicated must  go  like  clockwork.  But  com- 
plexity is  no  guarantee  of  accuracy — in  clock- 
work or  in  anything  else.  A  clock  can  be  as 
wrong  as  the  human  head;  and  a  clock  can 
stop,  as  suddenly  as  the  human  heart. 

But  this  strange  poetry  of  plutocracy  pre- 
vails over  people  against  their  very  senses. 
.You  write  to  one  of  the  great  London  stores 
or  emporia,  asking,  let  us  say,  for  an  umbrella. 
A  month  or  two  afterwards  you  receive  a  very 
elaborately  constructed  parcel,  containing  a 
broken  parasol.  You  are  very  pleased.  You 
are  gratified  to  reflect  on  what  a  vast  number 
of  assistants  and  employees  had  combined  to 
break  that  parasol.  You  luxuriate  in  the 
memory  of  all  those  long  rooms  and  depart- 
ments and  wonder  in  which  of  them  the  parasol 
that  you  never  ordered  was  broken.  Or  you 
want  a  toy  elephant  for  your  child  on  Christ- 
mas Day ;  as  children,  like  all  nice  and  healthy 


22  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

people,  are  very  ritualistic.  Some  week  or  so 
after  Twelfth  Night,  let  us  say,  you  have  the 
pleasure  of  removing  three  layers  of  paste- 
boards, five  layers  of  brown  paper,  and  fifteen 
layers  of  tissue  paper  and  discovering  the 
fragments  of  an  artificial  crocodile.  You  smile 
in  an  expansive  spirit.  You  feel  that  your 
soul  has  been  broadened  by  the  vision  of  in- 
competence conducted  on  so  large  a  scale. 
You  admire  all  the  more  the  colossal  and  Om- 
nipresent Brain  of  the  Organiser  of  Industry, 
who  amid  all  his  multitudinous  cares  did  not 
disdain  to  remember  his  duty  of  smashing  even 
the  smallest  toy  of  the  smallest  child.  Or,  sup- 
posing you  have  asked  him  to  send  you  some 
two  rolls  of  cocoa-nut  matting :  and  supposing 
(after  a  due  interval  for  reflection)  he  duly 
delivers  to  you  the  five  rolls  of  wire  netting. 
You  take  pleasure  in  the  consideration  of  a 
mystery :  which  coarse  minds  might  have  called 
a  mistake.    It  consoles  you  to  know  how  big 


UNBUSINESSLIKE  BUSINESS       23 

the  business  is :  and  what  an  enormous  number 
of  people  were  needed  to  make  such  a  mistake. 

That  is  the  romance  that  has  been  told  about 
the  big  shops;  in  the  literature  and  art  which 
they  have  bought,  and  which  (as  I  said  in  my 
recent  articles)  will  soon  be  quite  indistin- 
guishable from  their  ordinary  advertisements. 
The  literature  is  commercial;  and  it  is  only 
fair  to  say  that  the  commerce  is  often  really 
literary.    It  is  no  romance,  but  only  rubbish. 

The  big  commercial  concerns  of  to-day  are 
quite  exceptionally  incompetent.  They  will  be 
even  more  incompetent  when  they  are  omnipo- 
tent. Indeed,  that  is,  and  always  has  been,  the 
whole  point  of  a  monopoly ;  the  old  and  sound 
argument  against  a  monopoly.  It  is  only  be- 
cause it  is  incompetent  that  it  has  to  be  omnipo- 
tent. When  one  large  shop  occupies  the  whole 
of  one  side  of  a  street  (or  sometimes  both 
sides),  it  does  so  in  order  that  men  may  be  un- 
able to  get  what  they  want ;  and  may  be  forced 


24  UTOPIA  OF  USUKERS 

to  buy  what  they  don't  want.  That  the  rap- 
idly approaching  kingdom  of  the  CapitaHsts 
will  ruin  art  and  letters,  I  have  already  said. 
I  say  here  that  in  the  only  sense  that  can  be 
called  human,  it  will  ruin  trade,  too. 

I  will  not  let  Christmas  go  by,  even  when 
writing  for  a  revolutionary  paper  necessarily 
appealing  to  many  with  none  of  my  religious 
sympathies,  without  appealing  to  those  sympa- 
thies. I  knew  a  man  who  sent  to  a  great  rich 
shop  for  a  figure  for  a  group  of  Bethlehem.  It 
arrived  broken.  I  think  that  is  exactly  all  that 
business  men  have  now  the  sense  to  do. 


IV 

The  War  on  Holidays 

The  general  proposition,  not  always  easy  to 
define  exhaustively,  that  the  reign  of  the  capi- 
talist will  be  the  reign  of  the  cad — that  is,  of 
the  unlicked  type  that  is  neither  the  citizen  nor 
the  gentleman — can  be  excellently  studied  in 
its  attitude  towards  holidays.  The  special  em- 
blematic Employer  of  to-day,  especially  the 
Model  Employer  (who  is  the  worst  sort)  has 
in  his  starved  and  evil  heart  a  sincere  hatred  of 
holidays.  I  do  not  mean  that  he  necessarily 
wants  all  his  workmen  to  work  until  they 
drop ;  that  only  occurs  when  he  happens  to  be 
stupid  as  well  as  wicked.    I  do  not  mean  to 

say  that  he  is  necessarily  unwilling  to  grant 

25 


26  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

what  he  would  call  "decent  hours  of  labour." 
He  may  treat  men  like  dirt ;  but  if  you  want  to 
make  money,  even  out  of  dirt,  you  must  let  it 
lie  fallow  by  some  rotation  of  rest.  He  may 
treat  men  as  dogs,  but  unless  he  is  a  lunatic  he 
will  for  certain  periods  let  sleeping  dogs  lie. 

But  humane  and  reasonable  hours  for  labour 
have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  idea  of 
holidays.  It  is  not  even  a  question  of  ten- 
hours  day  and  eight-hours  day ;  it  is  not  a  ques- 
tion of  cutting  down  leisure  to  the  space  neces- 
sary for  food,  sleep  and  exercise.  If  the  mod- 
ern employer  came  to  the  conclusion,  for  some 
reason  or  other,  that  he  could  get  most  out  of 
his  men  by  working  them  hard  for  only  two 
hours  a  day,  his  whole  mental  attitude  would 
still  be  foreign  and  hostile  to  holidays.  For 
his  whole  mental  attitude  is  that  the  passive 
time  and  the  active  time  are  alike  useful  for 
him  and  his  business.  All  is,  indeed,  grist  that 
comes  to  his  mill,  including  the  millers.    His 


THE  WAR  ON  HOLIDAYS  27 

slaves'  still  serve  him  in  unconsciousness,  as 
dogs  still  hunt  in  slumber.  His  grist  is  ground 
not  only  by  the  sounding  wheels  of  iron,  but 
by  the  soundless  wheel  of  blood  and  brain. 
His  sacks  are  still  filling  silently  when  the 
doors  are  shut  on  the  streets  and  the  sound  of 
the  grinding  is  low. 

The  Great  HoKday 

Now  a  holiday  has  no  connection  with  using 
a  man  either  by  beating  or  feeding  him.  When 
you  give  a  man  a  holiday  you  give  him  back 
his  body  and  soul.  It  is  quite  possible  you  may 
be  doing  him  an  injury  (though  he  seldom 
thinks  so) ,  but  that  does  not  affect  the  question 
for  those  to  whom  a  holiday  is  holy.  Immor- 
tality is  the  great  holiday;  and  a  holiday,  like 
the  immortality  in  the  old  theologies,  is  a 
double-edged  privilege.  But  wherever  it  is 
genuine  it  is  simply  the  restoration  and  comple- 
tion of  the  man.    If  people  ever  looked  at  the 


28  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

printed  word  under  their  eye,  the  word  "recre- 
ation" would  be  like  the  word  "resurrection,'* 
the  blast  of  a  trumpet. 

A  man,  being  merely  useful,  is  necessarily 
incomplete,  especially  if  he  be  a  modern  man 
and  means  by  being  useful  being  "utilitarian." 
A  man  going  into  a  modern  club  gives  up  his 
hat ;  a  man  going  into  a  modern  factory  gives 
up  his  head.  He  then  goes  in  and  works  loy- 
ally for  the  old  firm  to  build  up  the  great  fab- 
ric of  commerce  (which  can  be  done  without  a 
head) ,  but  when  he  has  done  work  he  goes  to 
the  cloak-room,  like  the  man  at  the  club,  and 
gets  his  head  back  again;  that  is  the  germ  of 
the  holiday.  It  may  be  urged  that  the  club 
man  who  leaves  his  hat  often  goes  away  with 
another  hat;  and  perhaps  it  may  be  the  same 
with  the  factory  hand  who  has  left  his  head.  A 
hand  that  has  lost  its  head  may  affect  the  fas- 
tidious as  a  mixed  metaphor ;  but,  God  pardon 
us  all,  what  an  unmixed  truth  1    We  could  al- 


THE  WAR  ON  HOLIDAYS  29 

most  prove  the  whole  case  from  the  habit  of 
calhng  human  beings  merely  "hands"  while 
they  are  working;  as  if  the  hand  were  horribly 
cut  off,  like  the  hand  that  has  offended;  as  if, 
while  the  sinner  entered  heaven  maimed,  his 
unhappy  hand  still  laboured  laying  up  riches 
for  the  lords  of  hell.  But  to  return  to  the  man 
whom  we  found  waiting  for  his  head  in  the 
cloak-room.  It  may  be  urged,  we  say,  that  he 
might  take  the  wrong  head,  like  the  wrong  hat; 
but  here  the  similarity  ceases.  For  it  has  been 
observed  by  benevolent  onlookers  at  life's 
drama  that  the  hat  taken  away  by  mistake  is 
frequently  better  than  the  real  hat;  whereas 
the  head  taken  away  after  the  hours  of  toil  is 
certainly  worse:  stained  with  the  cobwebs  and 
dust  of  this  dustbin  of  all  the  centuries. 

The  Supreme  Adventure 

All  the  words  dedicated  to  places  of  eating 
and  drinking  are  pure  and  poetic  words.  Even 


30  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

the  word  "hotel"  is  the  word  hospital.  And 
St.  Julien,  whose  claret  I  drank  this  Christ- 
mas, was  the  patron  saint  of  innkeepers,  be- 
cause (as  far  as  I  can  make  out)  he  was  hos- 
pitable to  lepers.  Now  I  do  not  say  that  the 
ordinary  hotel-keeper  in  Piccadilly  or  the  Ave- 
nue de  rOpera  would  embrace  a  leper,  slap  him 
on  the  back,  and  ask  him  to  order  what  he 
liked ;  but  I  do  say  that  hospitality  is  his  trade 
virtue.  And  I  do  also  say  it  is  well  to  keep 
before  our  eyes  the  supreme  adventure  of  a 
virtue.  If  you  are  brave,  think  of  the  man  who 
was  braver  than  you.  If  you  are  kind,  think 
of  the  man  who  was  kinder  than  you. 

That  is  what  was  meant  by  having  a  patron 
saint.  That  is  the  link  between  the  poor  saint 
who  received  bodily  lepers  and  the  great  hotel 
proprietor  who  (as  a  rule)  receives  spiritual 
lepers.  But  a  word  yet  weaker  than  "hotel" 
illustrates  the  same  point — the  word  "restau- 
rant."    There  again  you  have  the  admission 


THE  WAR  ON  HOLIDAYS  31 

that  there  is  a  definite  building  or  statue  to 
"restore" ;  that  ineffaceable  image  of  man  that 
some  call  the  image  of  God.  And  that  is  the 
holiday;  it  is  the  restaurant  or  restoring  thing 
that,  by  a  blast  of  magic,  turns  a  man  into  him- 
self. 

This  complete  and  reconstructed  man  is  the 
nightmare  of  the  modern  capitalist.  His  whole 
scheme  would  crack  across  like  a  mirror  of 
Shallot,  if  once  a  plain  man  were  ready  for  his 
two  plain  duties — ready  to  live  and  ready  to 
die.  And  that  horror  of  holidays  which  marks 
the  modern  capitalist  is  very  largely  a  horror 
of  the  vision  of  a  whole  human  being:  some- 
thing that  is  not  a  "hand"  or  a  "head  for  fig- 
ures." But  an  awful  creature  who  has  met 
himself  in  the  wilderness.  The  employers  will 
give  time  to  eat,  time  to  sleep ;  they  are  in  ter- 
ror of  a  time  to  think. 

To  anyone  who  knows  any  history  it  is 
wholly  needless  to  say  that  holidays  have  been 


32  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

destroyed.  As  Mr.  Belloc,  who  knows  much 
more  history  than  you  or  I,  recently  pointed 
out  in  the  "Pall  Mall  Magazine,"  Shake- 
speare's title  of  "Twelfth  Night:  or  What  You 
Will"  simply  meant  that  a  winter  carnival  for 
everybody  went  on  wildly  till  the  twelfth  night 
after  Christmas.  Those  of  my  readers  who 
work  for  modern  offices  or  factories  might  ask 
their  employers  for  twelve  days'  holidays  after 
Christmas.  And  they  might  let  me  know  the 
reply. 


The  Chuech  of  the  Servile  State 

I  confess  I  cannot  see  why  mere  blasphemy 
by  itself  should  be  an  excuse  for  tyranny  and 
treason ;  or  how  the  mere  isolated  fact  of  a  man 
not  believing  in  God  should  be  a  reason  for  my 
believing  in  Him. 

But  the  rather  spinsterish  flutter  among 
some  of  the  old  Freethinkers  has  put  one  tiny 
ripple  of  truth  in  it;  and  that  affects  the  idea 
which  I  wish  to  emphasise  even  to  monotony 
in  these  pages.  I  mean  the  idea  that  the  new 
community  which  the  capitalists  are  now  con- 
structing will  be  a  very  complete  and  absolute 
community;  and  one  which  will  tolerate  noth- 

33 


34  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

ing  really  independent  of  itself.  Now,  it  is 
true  that  any  positive  creed,  true  or  false, 
would  tend  to  be  independent  of  itself.  It 
might  be  Roman  Catholicism  or  Mahomedan- 
ism  or  Materialism;  but,  if  strongly  held,  it 
would  be  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  the  Servile 
State.  The  Moslem  thinks  all  men  immortal: 
the  Materialist  thinks  all  men  mortal.  But  the 
Moslem  does  not  think  the  rich  Sinbad  will 
live  forever;  but  the  poor  Sinbad  will  die  on 
his  deathbed.  The  Materialist  does  not  think 
that  Mr.  Haeckel  will  go  to  heaven,  while  all 
the  peasants  will  go  to  pot,  like  their  chickens. 
In  every  serious  doctrine  of  the  destiny  of  men, 
there  is  some  trace  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
equality  of  men.  But  the  capitalist  really  de- 
pends on  some  religion  of  inequality.  The 
capitalist  must  somehow  distinguish  himself 
from  human  kind ;  he  must  be  obviously  above 
it — or  he  would  be  obviously  below  it.  Take 
even  the  least  attractive  and  popular  side  of 


CHURCH  OF  THE  SERVILE  STATE    35 

the  larger  religions  to-day;  take  the  mere  ve- 
toes imposed  by  Islam  on  Atheism  or  Catholi- 
cism. The  Moslem  veto  upon  intoxicants  cuts 
across  all  classes.  But  it  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary for  the  capitalist  (who  presides  at  a  Li- 
censing Committee,  and  also  at  a  large  din- 
ner), it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  him^  to 
make  a  distinction  between  gin  and  cham- 
pagne. The  Atheist  veto  upon  all  miracles 
cuts  across  all  classes.  But  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  for  the  capitalist  to  make  a  distinc- 
tion between  his  wife  (who  is  an  aristocrat  and 
consults  crystal  gazers  and  star  gazers  in  the 
West  End),  and  vulgar  miracles  claimed  by 
gipsies  or  travelling  showmen.  The  Catholic 
veto  upon  usury,  as  defined  in  dogmatic  coun- 
cils, cuts  across  all  classes.  But  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  the  capitalist  to  distinguish  more 
delicately  between  two  kinds  of  usury;  the 
kind  he  finds  useful  and  the  kind  he  does  not 
find  useful.    The  religion  of  the  Servile  State 


36  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

must  have  no  dogmas  or  definitions.  It  can- 
not afford  to  have  any  definitions.  For  defi- 
nitions are  very  dreadful  things:  they  do  the 
two  things  that  most  men,  especially  comfort- 
able men,  cannot  endure.  They  fight;  and 
they  fight  fair. 

Every  religion,  apart  from  open  devil  wor- 
ship, must  appeal  to  a  virtue  or  the  pretence 
of  a  virtue.  But  a  virtue,  generally  speaking, 
does  some  good  to  everybody.  It  is  therefore 
necessary  to  distinguish  among  the  people  it 
was  meant  to  benefit  those  whom  it  does  bene- 
fit. Modern  broad-mindedness  benefits  the 
rich;  and  benefits  nobody  else.  It  was  meant 
to  benefit  the  rich;  and  meant  to  benefit  no- 
body else.  And  if  you  think  this  unwarranted, 
I  will  put  before  you  one  plain  question. 
There  are  some  pleasures  of  the  poor  that  may 
also  mean  profits  for  the  rich:  there  are  other 
pleasures  of  the  poor  which  cannot  mean  prof- 
its for  the  rich?    Watch  this  one  contrast,  and 


CHURCH  OF  THE  SERVILE  STATE    37 

you  will  watch  the  whole  creation  of  a  careful 
slavery. 

In  the  last  resort  the  two  things  called  Beer 
and  Soap  end  only  in  a  froth.  They  are  both 
below  the  high  notice  of  a  real  religion.  But 
there  is  just  this  difference:  that  the  soap 
makes  the  factory  more  satisfactory,  while  the 
beer  only  makes  the  workman  more  satisfied. 
Wait  and  see  if  the  Soap  does  not  increase  and 
the  Beer  decrease.  Wait  and  see  whether  the 
religion  of  the  Servile  State  is  not  in  every  case 
what  I  say :  the  encouragement  of  small  virtues 
supporting  capitalism,  the  discouragement  of 
the  huge  virtues  that  defy  it.  Many  great  re- 
ligions, Pagan  and  Christian,  have  insisted  on 
wine.  Only  one,  I  think,  has  insisted  on  Soap. 
You  will  find  it  in  the  New  Testament  attrib- 
uted to  the  Pharisees. 


VI 

Science  and  the  Eugenists 

The  key  fact  in  the  new  development  of 
plutocracy  is  that  it  will  use  its  own  blunder 
as  an  excuse  for  further  crimes.  Everywhere 
the  very  completeness  of  the  impoverishment 
will  be  made  a  reason  for  the  enslavement; 
though  the  men  who  impoverished  were  the 
same  who  enslaved.  It  is  as  if  a  highwayman 
not  only  took  away  a  gentleman's  horse  and  all 
his  money,  but  then  handed  him  over  to  the 
police  for  tramping  without  visible  means  of 
subsistence.  And  the  most  monstrous  feature 
in  this  enormous  meanness  may  be  noted  in  the 
plutocratic  appeal  to  science,  or,  rather,  to  the 
pseudo-science  that  they  call  Eugenics. 

38 


SCIENCE  AND  THE  EUGENISTS    39 

The  Eugenists  get  the  ear  of  the  humane 
but  rather  hazy  cHques  by  saying  that  the  pres- 
ent "conditions"  under  which  people  work  and 
breed  are  bad  for  the  race;  but  the  modern 
mind  will  not  generally  stretch  beyond  one 
step  of  reasoning,  and  the  consequence  which 
appears  to  follow  on  the  consideration  of  these 
"conditions"  is  by  no  means  what  would  origi- 
nally have  been  expected.  If  somebody  says: 
"A  rickety  cradle  may  mean  a  rickety  baby," 
the  natural  deduction,  one  would  think,  would 
be  to  give  the  people  a  good  cradle,  or  give 
them  money  enough  to  buy  one.  But  that 
means  higher  wages  and  greater  equalisation 
of  wealth;  and  the  plutocratic  scientist,  with 
a  slightly  troubled  expression,  turns  his  eyes 
and  pince-nez  in  another  direction.  Reduced 
to  brutal  terms  of  truth,  his  difficulty  is  this 
and  simply  this :  More  food,  leisure,  and  money 
for  the  workman  would  mean  a  better  work- 
man, better  even  from  the  point  of  view  of 


40  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

anyone  for  whom  he  worked.  But  more  food, 
leisure,  and  money  would  also  mean  a  more 
independent  workman.  A  house  with  a  decent 
fire  and  a  full  pantry  would  be  a  better  house 
to  make  a  chair  or  mend  a  clock  in,  even  from 
the  customer's  point  of  view,  than  a  hovel  with 
a  leaky  roof  and  a  cold  hearth.  But  a  house 
with  a  decent  fire  and  a  full  pantry  would  also 
be  a  better  house  in  which  to  refuse  to  make  a 
chair  or  mend  a  clock — a  much  better  house  to 
do  nothing  in — and  doing  nothing  is  sometimes 
one  of  the  highest  of  the  duties  of  man.  All  but 
the  hard-hearted  must  be  torn  with  pity  for 
this  pathetic  dilemma  of  the  rich  man,  who  has 
to  keep  the  poor  man  just  stout  enough  to  do 
the  work  and  just  thin  enough  to  have  to  do 
it.  As  he  stood  gazing  at  the  leaky  roof  and 
the  rickety  cradle  in  a  pensive  manner,  there 
one  day  came  into  his  mind  a  new  and  curious 
idea — one  of  the  most  strange,  simple,  and  hor- 


SCIENCE  AND  THE  EUGENISTS    41 

rible  ideas  that  have  ever  risen  from  the  deep 
pit  of  original  sin. 

The  roof  could  not  be  mended,  or,  at  least,  it 
could  not  be  mended  much,  without  upsetting 
the  capitalist  balance,  or,  rather,  dispropor- 
tion in  society ;  for  a  man  with  a  roof  is  a  man 
with  a  house,  and  to  that  extent  his  house  is 
his  castle.  The  cradle  could  not  be  made  to 
rock  easier,  or,  at  least,  not  much  easier,  with- 
out strengthening  the  hands  of  the  poor  house- 
hold, for  the  hand  that  rocks  the  cradle  rules 
the  world — to  that  extent.  But  it  occurred  to 
the  capitalist  that  there  was  one  sort  of  furni- 
ture in  the  house  that  could  be  altered.  The 
husband  and  wife  could  be  altered.  Birth 
costs  nothing,  except  in  pain  and  valour  and 
such  old-fashioned  things;  and  the  merchant 
need  pay  no  more  for  mating  a  strong  miner 
to  a  healthy  fishwife  than  he  pays  when  the 
miner  mates  himself  with  a  less  robust  female 


42  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

whom  he  has  the  sentimentahty  to  prefer. 
Thus  it  might  be  possible,  by  keeping  on  cer- 
tain broad  lines  of  heredity,  to  have  some  phys- 
ical improvement  without  any  moral,  politi- 
cal, or  social  improvement.  It  might  be  pos- 
sible to  keep  a  supply  of  strong  and  healthy 
slaves  without  coddling  them  with  decent 
conditions.  As  the  mill-owners  use  the  wind 
and  the  water  to  drive  their  mills,  they 
would  use  this  natural  force  as  something 
even  cheaper ;  and  turn  their  wheels  by  divert- 
ing from  its  channel  the  blood  of  a  man  in  his 
youth.  That  is  what  Eugenics  means;  and 
that  is  all  that  it  means. 

Of  the  moral  state  of  those  who  think  of 
such  things  it  does  not  become  us  to  speak. 
The  practical  question  is  rather  the  intellectual 
one:  of  whether  their  calculations  are  well 
founded,  and  whether  the  men  of  science  can 
or  will  guarantee  them  any  such  physical  cer- 
tainties.   Fortunately,  it  becomes  clearer  every 


SCIENCE  AND  THE  EUGENISTS    43 

day  that  they  are,  scientifically  speaking, 
building  on  the  shifting  sand.  The  theory  of 
breeding  slaves  breaks  down  through  what  a 
democrat  calls  the  equality  of  men,  but  which 
even  an  oligarchist  will  find  himself  forced  to 
call  the  similarity  of  men.  That  is,  that  though 
it  is  not  true  that  all  men  are  normal,  it  is 
overwhelmingly  certain  that  most  men  are  nor- 
mal. All  the  common  Eugenic  arguments  are 
drawn  from  extreme  cases,  which,  even  if 
human  honour  and  laughter  allowed  of  their 
being  eliminated,  would  not  by  their  elimina- 
tion greatly  affect  the  mass.  For  the  rest,  there 
remains  the  enormous  weakness  in  Eugenics, 
that  if  ordinary  men's  judgment  or  liberty  is 
to  be  discounted  in  relation  to  heredity,  the 
judgment  of  the  judges  must  be  discounted  in 
relation  to  their  heredity.  The  Eugenic  pro- 
fessor may  or  may  not  succeed  in  choosing  a 
baby's  parents;  it  is  quite  certain  that  he  can- 
not succeed  in  choosing  his  own  parents.    All 


44  UTOPIA  OF  USUEERS 

his  thoughts,  including  his  Eugenic  thoughts, 
are,  by  the  very  principle  of  those  thoughts, 
flowing  from  a  doubtful  or  tainted  source.  In 
short,  we  should  need  a  perfectly  Wise  Man 
to  do  the  thing  at  all.  And  if  he  were  a  Wise 
Man  he  would  not  do  it. 


VII 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  PRISON 

I  HAVE  never  understood  why  it  is  that  those 
who  talk  most  about  evolution,  and  talk  it  in 
the  very  age  of  fashionable  evolutionism,  do 
not  see  the  one  way  in  which  evolution  really 
does  apply  to  our  modern  difficulty.  There  is, 
of  course,  an  element  of  evolutionism  in  the 
universe ;  and  I  know  no  religion  or  philosophy 
that  ever  entirely  ignored  it.  Evolution,  pop- 
ularly speaking,  is  that  which  happens  to  un- 
conscious things.  They  grow  unconsciously; 
or  fade  unconsciously ;  or  rather,  some  parts  of 
them  grow  and  some  parts  of  them  fade ;  and 
at  any  given  moment  there  is  almost  always 
some  presence  of  the  fading  thing,  and  some 

45 


46  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

incompleteness  in  the  growing  one.  Thus,  if  I 
went  to  sleep  for  a  hundred  years,  like  the 
Sleeping  Beauty  (I  wish  I  could),  I  should 
grow  a  beard — unlike  the  Sleeping  Beauty. 
And  just  as  I  should  grow  hair  if  I  were  asleep, 
I  should  grow  grass  if  I  were  dead.  Those 
whose  religion  it  was  that  God  was  asleep  were 
perpetually  impressed  and  affected  by  the  fact 
that  he  had  a  long  beard.  And  those  whose 
philosophy  it  is  that  the  universe  is  dead  from 
the  beginning  (being  the  grave  of  nobody  in 
particular)  think  that  is  the  way  that  grass  can 
grow.  In  any  case,  these  developments  only 
occur  with  dead  or  dreaming  things.  What 
happens  when  everyone  is  asleep  is  called  Evo- 
lution. What  happens  when  everyone  is  awake 
is  called  Revolution. 

There  was  once  an  honest  man,  whose  name 
I  never  knew,  but  whose  face  I  can  almost 
see  (it  is  framed  in  Victorian  whiskers  and 
fixed  in  a  Victorian  neck-cloth),  who  was  bal- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  PRISON    47 

ancing  the  achievements  of  France  and  Eng- 
land in  civilisation  and  social  efficiencies.  And 
when  he  came  to  the  religious  aspect  he  said 
that  there  were  more  stone  and  brick  churches 
used  in  France;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
are  more  sects  in  England.  Whether  such  a 
lively  disintegration  is  a  proof  of  vitality  in 
any  valuable  sense  I  have  always  doubted. 
The  sun  may  breed  maggots  in  a  dead  dog; 
but  it  is  essential  for  such  a  liberation  of  life 
that  the  dog  should  be  unconscious  or  (to  say 
the  least  of  it)  absent-minded.  Broadly  speak- 
ing, you  may  call  the  thing  corruption,  if  you 
happen  to  like  dogs.  You  may  call  it  evolu- 
tion, if  you  happen  to  hke  maggots.  In  either 
case,  it  is  what  happens  to  things  if  you  leave 
them  alone. 

The  Evolutionists'  Error 

Now,  the  modern  Evolutionists  have  made 
no  real  use  of  the  idea  of  evolution,  especially 


48  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

in  the  matter  of  social  prediction.  They  al- 
ways fall  into  what  is  (from  their  logical  point 
of  view)  the  error  of  supposing  that  evolution 
knows  what  it  is  doing.  They  predict  the  State 
of  the  future  as  a  fruit  rounded  and  polished. 
But  the  whole  point  of  evolution  (the  only 
point  there  is  in  it)  is  that  no  State  will  ever 
be  rounded  and  polished,  because  it  will  al- 
ways contain  some  organs  that  outlived  their 
use,  and  some  that  have  not  yet  fully  found 
theirs.  If  we  wish  to  prophesy  what  will  hap- 
pen, we  must  imagine  things  now  moderate 
grown  enormous ;  things  now  local  grown  uni- 
versal; things  now  promising  grown  triumph- 
ant; primroses  bigger  than  sunflowers,  and 
sparrows  stalking  about  like  flamingoes. 

In  other  words,  we  must  ask  what  modern 
institution  has  a  future  before  it?  What  mod- 
ern institution  may  have  swollen  to  six  times 
its  present  size  in  the  social  heat  and  growth 
of  the  future?    I  do  not  think  the  Garden  City 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  PRISON    49 

will  grow :  but  of  that  I  may  speak  in  my  next 
and  last  article  of  this  series.  I  do  not  think 
even  the  ordinary  Elementary  School,  with  its 
compulsory  education,  will  grow.  Too  many 
unlettered  people  hate  the  teacher  for  teach- 
ing; and  too  many  lettered  people  hate  the 
teacher  for  not  teaching.  The  Garden  City 
will  not  bear  much  blossom;  the  young  idea 
will  not  shoot,  unless  it  shoots  the  teacher.  But 
the  one  flowering  tree  on  the  estate,  the  one 
natural  expansion  which  I  think  will  expand, 
is  the  institution  we  call  the  Prison. 

Prisons  for  All 

If  the  capitalists  are  allowed  to  erect  their 
constructive  capitalist  community,  I  speak 
quite  seriously  when  I  say  that  I  think  Prison 
will  become  an  almost  universal  experience. 
It  will  not  necessarily  be  a  cruel  or  shameful 
experience:  on  these  points  (I  concede  cer- 
tainly for  the  present  purpose  of  debate)   it 


50  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

may  be  a  vastly  improved  experience.  The 
conditions  in  the  prison,  very  possibly,  will  be 
made  more  humane.  But  the  prison  will  be 
made  more  humane  only  in  order  to  contain 
more  of  humanity.  I  think  little  of  the  judg- 
ment and  sense  of  humour  of  any  man  who  can 
have  watched  recent  police  trials  without  real- 
ising that  it  is  no  longer  a  question  of  whether 
the  law  has  been  broken  by  a  crime ;  but,  now, 
solely  a  question  of  whether  the  situation  could 
be  mended  by  an  imprisonment.  It  was  so 
with  Tom  Mann;  it  was  so  with  Larkin;  it 
was  so  with  the  poor  atheist  who  was  kept  in 
gaol  for  saying  something  he  had  been  ac- 
quitted of  saying:  it  is  so  in  such  cases  day  by 
day.  We  no  longer  lock  a  man  up  for  doing 
something;  we  lock  him  up  in  the  hope  of  his 
doing  nothing.  Given  this  principle,  it  is  evi- 
dently possible  to  make  the  mere  conditions  of 
punishment  more  moderate,  or — (more  prob- 
ably) more  secret.    There  may  really  be  more 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  PRISON    51 

mercy  in  the  Prison,  on  condition  that  there 
is  less  justice  in  the  Court.  I  should  not  be 
surprised  if,  before  we  are  done  with  all  this,  a 
man  was  allowed  to  smoke  in  prison,  on  condi- 
tion, of  course,  that  he  had  been  put  in  prison 
for  smoking. 

Now  that  is  the  process  which,  in  the  absence 
of  democratic  protest,  will  certainly  proceed, 
will  increase  and  multiply  and  replenish  the 
earth  and  subdue  it.  Prison  may  even  lose  its 
disgrace  for  a  little  time;  it  will  be  difficult 
to  make  it  disgraceful  when  men  like  Larkin 
can  be  imprisoned  for  no  reason  at  all,  just  as 
his  celebrated  ancestor  was  hanged  for  no  rea- 
son at  all.  But  capitalist  society,  which  natur- 
ally does  not  know  the  meaning  of  honour, 
cannot  know  the  meaning  of  disgrace:  and  it 
will  still  go  on  imprisoning  for  no  reason  at 
all.  Or  rather  for  that  rather  simple  reason 
that  makes  a  cat  spring  or  a  rat  run  away. 

It  matters  little  whether  our  masters  stoop 


52  UTOPIA  OF  USUREES 

to  state  the  matter  in  the  form  that  every 
prison  should  be  a  school ;  or  in  the  more  candid 
form  that  every  school  should  be  a  prison. 
They  have  already  fulfilled  their  servile  prin- 
ciple in  the  case  of  the  schools.  Everyone  goes 
to  the  Elementary  Schools  except  the  few  peo- 
ple who  tell  them  to  go  there.  I  prophesy  that 
(unless  our  revolt  succeeds)  nearly  everyone 
will  be  going  to  Prison,  with  a  precisely  similar 
patience. 


VIII 

The  Lash  for  Labour 

If  I  were  to  prophesy  that  two  hundred 
years  hence  a  grocer  would  have  the  right  and 
habit  of  beating  the  grocer's  assistant  with  a 
stick,  or  that  shop  girls  might  be  flogged,  as 
they  already  can  be  fined,  many  would  regard 
it  as  rather  a  rash  remark.  It  would  be  a  rash 
remark.  Prophecy  is  always  unreliable ;  unless 
we  except  the  kind  which  is  avowedly  irra- 
tional, mystical  and  supernatural  prophecy. 
But  relatively  to  nearly  all  the  other  prophecies 
that  are  being  made  around  me  to-day,  I  should 
say  my  prediction  stood  an  exceptionally  good 
chance.  In  short,  I  think  the  grocer  with  the 
stick  is  a  figure  we  are  far  more  likely  to  see 

53 


54  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

than  the  Superman  or  the  Samurai,  or  the  True 
Model  Employer,  or  the  Perfect  Fabian  Of- 
ficial, or  the  citizen  of  the  Collectivist  State. 
And  it  is  best  for  us  to  see  the  full  ugliness  of 
the  transformation  which  is  passing  over  our 
Society  in  some  such  abrupt  and  even  gro- 
tesque image  at  the  end  of  it.  The  beginnings 
of  a  decline,  in  every  age  of  history,  have  al- 
ways had  the  appearance  of  being  reforms. 
Nero  not  only  fiddled  while  Rome  was  burning, 
but  he  probably  really  paid  more  attention  to 
the  fiddle  than  to  the  fire.  The  Roi  Soleil,  like 
many  other  soleils,  was  most  splendid  to  all 
appearance  a  little  before  sunset.  And  if  I  ask 
myself  what  will  be  the  ultimate  and  final  fruit 
of  all  our  social  reforms,  garden  cities,  model 
employers,  insurances,  exchanges,  arbitration 
courts,  and  so  on,  then,  I  say,  quite  seriously, 
"I  think  it  will  be  labour  under  the  lash." 


THE  LASH  FOR  LABOUR  55 

The  Sultan    and    the    Sack 

Let  us  arrange  in  some  order  a  number  of 
converging  considerations  that  all  point  in  this 
direction.  (1)  It  is  broadly  true,  no  doubt, 
that  the  weapon  of  the  employer  has  hitherto 
been  the  threat  of  dismissal,  that  is,  the  threat 
of  enforced  starvation.  He  is  a  Sultan  who 
need  not  order  the  bastinado,  so  long  as  he  can 
order  the  sack.  But  there  are  not  a  few  signs 
that  this  weapon  is  not  quite  so  convenient  and 
flexible  a  one  as  his  increasing  rapacities  re- 
quire. The  fact  of  the  introduction  of  fines, 
secretly  or  openly,  in  many  shops  and  factories, 
proves  that  it  is  convenient  for  the  capitalists 
to  have  some  temporary  and  adjustable  form 
of  punishment  besides  the  final  punishment  of 
pure  ruin.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  see  the  com- 
monsense  of  this  from  their  wholly  inhuman 
point  of  view.  The  act  of  sacking  a  man  is  at- 
tended with  the  same  disadvantages  as  the  act 


56  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

of  shooting  a  man:  one  of  which  is  that  you 
can  get  no  more  out  of  him*  It  is,  I  am  told, 
distinctly  annoying  to  blow  a  fellow  creature's 
brains  out  with  a  revolver  and  then  suddenly 
remember  that  he  was  the  only  person  who 
knew  where  to  get  the  best  Russian  cigarettes. 
So  our  Sultan,  who  is  the  orderer  of  the  sack, 
is  also  the  bearer  of  the  bow-string.  A  school 
in  which  there  was  no  punishment,  except  ex- 
pulsion, would  be  a  school  in  which  it  would 
be  very  difficult  to  keep  proper  discipline ;  and 
the  sort  of  discipline  on  which  the  reformed 
capitalism  will  insist  will  be  all  of  the  type 
which  in  free  nations  is  imposed  only  on  chil- 
dren. Such  a  school  would  probably  be  in  a 
chronic  condition  of  breaking  up  for  the  holi- 
days. And  the  reasons  for  the  insufficiency  of 
this  extreme  instrument  are  also  varied  and  evi- 
dent. The  materialistic  Sociologists,  who  talk 
about  the  survival  of  the  fittest  and  the  weakest 
going  to  the  wall  (and  whose  way  of  looking 


THE  LASH  FOR  LABOUR  57 

at  the  world  is  to  put  on  the  latest  and  most 
powerful  scientific  spectacles,  and  then  shut 
their  eyes),  frequently  talk  as  if  a  workman 
were  simply  efficient  or  non-efficient,  as  if  a 
criminal  were  reclaimable  or  irreclaimable. 
The  employers  have  sense  enough  at  least  to 
know  better  than  that.  They  can  see  that  a 
servant  may  be  useful  in  one  way  and  exas- 
perating in  another ;  that  he  may  be  bad  in  one 
part  of  his  work  and  good  in  another;  that  he 
may  be  occasionally  drunk  and  yet  generally 
indispensable.  Just  as  a  practical  school-mas- 
ter would  know  that  a  schoolboy  can  be  at 
once  the  plague  and  the  pride  of  the  school. 
Under  these  circumstances  small  and  varying 
penalties  are  obviously  the  most  convenient 
things  for  the  person  keeping  order ;  an  under- 
ling can  be  punished  for  coming  late,  and  yet 
do  useful  work  when  he  comes.  It  will  be  pos- 
sible to  give  a  rap  over  the  knuckles  without 
wholly  cutting  off  the  right  hand  that  has  of- 


58  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

fended.  Under  these  circumstances  the 
employers  have  naturally  resorted  to  fines. 
But  there  is  a  further  ground  for  believing  that 
the  process  will  go  beyond  fines  before  it  is 
completed. 

(2)  The  fine  is  based  on  the  old  European 
idea  that  everybody  possesses  private  property 
in  some  reasonable  degree ;  but  not  only  is  this 
not  true  to-day,  but  it  is  not  being  made  any 
truer,  even  by  those  who  honestly  believe  that 
they  are  mending  matters.  The  great  employ- 
ers will  often  do  something  towards  improving 
what  they  call  the  "conditions"  of  their  work- 
ers ;  but  a  worker  might  have  his  conditions  as 
carefully  arranged  as  a  racehorse  has,  and  still 
have  no  more  personal  property  than  a  race- 
horse. If  you  take  an  average  poor  seamstress 
or  factory  girl,  you  will  find  that  the  power  of 
chastising  her  through  her  property  has  very 
considerable  limits ;  it  is  almost  as  hard  for  the 
employer  of  labour  to  tax  her  for  punishment 


THE  LASH  FOR  LABOUR  59 

as  it  is  for  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  to 
tax  her  for  revenue.  The  next  most  obvious 
thing  to  think  of,  of  course,  would  be  imprison- 
ment, and  that  might  be  effective  enough  under 
simpler  conditions.  An  old-fashioned  shop- 
keeper might  have  locked  up  his  apprentice  in 
his  coal-cellar;  but  his  coal-cellar  would  be  a 
real,  pitch  dark  coal-cellar,  and  the  rest  of  his 
house  would  be  a  real  human  house.  Every- 
body (especially  the  apprentice)  would  see  a 
most  perceptible  difference  between  the  two. 
But,  as  I  pointed  out  in  the  article  before  this, 
the  whole  tendency  of  the  capitalist  legislation 
and  experiment  is  to  make  imprisonment  much 
more  general  and  automatic,  while  making  it, 
or  professing  to  make  it,  more  humane.  In 
other  words,  the  hygienic  prison  and  the  servile 
factory  will  become  so  uncommonly  like  each 
other  that  the  poor  man  will  hardly  know  or 
care  whether  he  is  at  the  moment  expiating  an 
offence  or  merely  swelling  a  dividend.    In  both 


60  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

places  there  will  be  the  same  sort  of  shiny  tiles. 
In  neither  place  will  there  be  any  cell  so  un- 
wholesome as  a  coal-cellar  or  so  wholesome  as 
a  home.  The  weapon  of  the  prison,  therefore, 
like  the  weapon  of  the  fine,  will  be  found  to 
have  considerable  limitations  to  its  effectiveness 
when  employed  against  the  wretched  reduced 
citizen  of  our  day.  Whether  it  be  property  or 
liberty  you  cannot  take  from  him  what  he  has 
not  got.  You  cannot  imprison  a  slave,  because 
you  cannot  enslave  a  slave. 

The  Barbarous  Revival 

(3)  Most  people,  on  hearing  the  sugges- 
tion that  it  may  come  to  corporal  punishment 
at  last  (as  it  did  in  every  slave  system  I  ever 
heard  of,  including  some  that  were  generally 
kindly,  and  even  successful),  will  merely  be 
struck  with  horror  and  incredulity,  and  feel 
that  such  a  barbarous  revival  is  unthinkable  in 
the  modern  atmosphere.    How  far  it  will  be, 


THE  LASH  FOE  LABOUR  61 

or  need  be,  a  revival  of  the  actual  images  and 
methods  of  ruder  times  I  will  discuss  in  a  mo- 
ment. But  first,  as  another  of  the  converging 
lines  tending  to  corporal  punishment,  consider 
this :  that  for  some  reason  or  other  the  old  full- 
blooded  and  masculine  humanitarianism  in  this 
matter  has  weakened  and  fallen  silent;  it  has 
weakened  and  fallen  silent  in  a  very  curious 
manner,  the  precise  reason  for  which  I  do  not 
altogether  understand.  I  knew  the  average 
Liberal,  the  average  Nonconformist  minister, 
the  average  Labour  Member,  the  average  mid- 
dle-class Socialist,  were,  with  all  their  good 
qualities,  very  deficient  in  what  I  consider  a 
respect  for  the  human  soul.  But  I  did  imagine 
that  they  had  the  ordinary  modern  respect  for 
the  human  body.  The  fact,  however,  is  clear 
and  incontrovertible.  In  spite  of  the  horror 
of  all  humane  people,  in  spite  of  the  hesitation 
even  of  our  corrupt  and  panic-stricken  Parlia- 
ment,   measures    can    now   be    triumphantly 


62  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

passed  for  spreading  or  increasing  the  use  of 
physical  torture,  and  for  applying  it  to  the 
newest  and  vaguest  categories  of  crime. 
Thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  nay,  twenty  years 
ago,  when  Mr.  F.  Hugh  O'Donnell  and  others 
forced  a  Liberal  Government  to  drop  the  cat- 
'o-nine-tails  like  a  scorpion,  we  could  have 
counted  on  a  mass  of  honest  hatred  of  such 
things.    We  cannot  count  on  it  now. 

(4)  But  lastly,  it  is  not  necessary  that  in 
the  factories  of  the  future  the  institution  of 
physical  punishment  should  actually  remind 
people  of  the  jambok  or  the  knout.  It  could 
easily  be  developed  out  of  the  many  forms  of 
physical  discipline  which  are  already  used  by 
employers  on  the  excuses  of  education  or  hy- 
giene. Already  in  some  factories  girls  are 
obliged  to  swim  whether  they  like  it  or  not,  or 
do  gymnastics  whether  they  like  it  or  not.  By 
a  simple  extension  of  hours  or  complication  of 
exercises  a  pair  of  Swedish  clubs  could  easily 


THE  LASH  FOE  LABOUR  63 

be  so  used  as  to  leave  their  victim  as  exhausted 
as  one  who  had  come  off  the  rack.  I  think  it 
extremely  likely  that  they  will  be. 


IX 

The  Mask  of  Socialism 

The  chief  aim  of  all  honest  Socialists  just 
now  is  to  prevent  the  coming  of  Socialism.  I 
do  not  say  it  as  a  sneer,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
as  a  compliment ;  a  compliment  to  their  politi- 
cal instinct  and  public  spirit.  I  admit  it  may 
be  called  an  exaggeration ;  but  there  really  is  a 
sort  of  sham  Socialism  that  the  modern  politi- 
cians may  quite  possibly  agree  to  set  up ;  if  they 
do  succeed  in  setting  it  up,  the  battle  for  the 
poor  is  lost. 

We  must  note,  first  of  all,  a  general  truth 
about  the  curious  time  we  live  in.  It  will  not 
be  so  difficult  as  some  people  may  suppose  to 
make  the  Servile  State  look  rather  like  Social- 

64 


THE  MASK  OF  SOCIALISM  65 

ism,  especially  to  the  more  pedantic  kind  of 
Socialist.  The  reason  is  this.  The  old  lucid 
and  trenchant  expounder  of  Socialism,  such  as 
Blatchford  or  Fred  Henderson,  always  de- 
scribes the  economic  power  of  the  plutocrats 
as  consisting  in  private  property.  Of  course, 
in  a  sense,  this  is  quite  true;  though  they  too 
often  miss  the  point  that  private  property,  as 
such,  is  not  the  same  as  property  confined  to 
the  few.  But  the  truth  is  that  the  situation  has 
grown  much  more  subtle;  perhaps  too  subtle, 
not  to  say  too  insane,  for  straight-thinking 
theorists  like  Blatchford.  The  rich  man  to-day 
does  not  only  rule  by  using  private  property; 
he  also  rules  by  treating  public  property  as  if 
it  were  private  property.  A  man  like  Lord 
INIurray  pulled  the  strings,  especially  the 
pursestrings ;  but  the  whole  point  of  his  posi- 
tion was  that  all  sorts  of  strings  had  got  en- 
tangled. The  secret  strength  of  the  money 
he  held  did  not  lie  merely  in  the  fact  that  it  was 


66  UTOPIA  OF  USUREES 

his  money.  It  lay  precisely  in  the  fact  that 
nobody  had  any  clear  idea  of  whether  it  was 
his  money,  or  his  successor's  money,  or  his 
brother's  money,  or  the  Marconi  Company's 
money,  or  the  Liberal  Party's  money,  or  the 
English  Nation's  money.  It  was  buried  treas- 
ure; but  it  was  not  private  property.  It  was 
the  acme  of  plutocracy  because  it  was  not  pri- 
vate property.  Now,  by  following  this  prece- 
dent, this  unprincipled  vagueness  about  official 
and  unofficial  moneys  by  the  cheerful  habit  of 
always  mixing  up  the  money  in  the  pocket  with 
the  money  in  the  till,  it  would  be  quite  possible 
to  keep  the  rich  as  rich  as  ever  in  practice, 
though  they  might  have  suffered  confiscation  in 
theory.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  has  four  hundred 
a  year  as  an  M.  P. ;  but  he  not  only  gets  much 
more  as  a  Minister,  but  he  might  at  any  time 
get  immeasurably  more  by  speculating  on 
State  secrets  that  are  necessarily  known  to  him. 
Some  say  that  he  has  even  attempted  some- 


/' 


THE  MASK  OF  SOCIALISM  67 

thing  of  the  kind.  Now,  it  would  be  quite  pos- 
sible to  cut  Mr.  George  down,  not  to  four 
hundred  a  year,  but  to  fourpence  a  day;  and 
still  leave  him  all  these  other  and  enormous 
financial  superiorities.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  a  Socialist  State,  in  any  way  resembling 
a  modern  State,  must,  however  egalitarian  it 
may  be,  have  the  handling  of  huge  sums,  and 
the  enjoyment  of  large  conveniences;  it  is  not 
improbable  that  the  same  men  will  handle  and 
enjoy  in  much  the  same  manner,  though  in 
theory  they  are  doing  it  as  instruments,  and  not 
as  individuals.  For  instance,  the  Prime  Min- 
ister has  a  private  house,  which  is  also  ( I  grieve 
to  inform  that  eminent  Puritan)  a  public 
house.  It  is  supposed  to  be  a  sort  of  Govern- 
ment office;  though  people  do  not  generally 
give  children's  parties,  or  go  to  bed  in  a  Gov- 
ernment office.  I  do  not  know  where  Mr. 
Herbert  Samuel  lives ;  but  I  have  no  doubt  he 
does  himself  well  in  the  matter  of  decoration 


68  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

and  furniture.  On  the  existing  official  parallel 
there  is  no  need  to  move  any  of  these  things  in 
order  to  Socialise  them.  There  is  no  need  to 
withdraw  one  diamond-headed  nail  from  the 
carpet;  or  one  golden  teaspoon  from  the  tray. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  call  it  an  official  resi-  ' 
dence,  like  10  Downing-street.  I  think  it  is 
not  at  all  improbable  that  this  Plutocracy,  pre- 
tending to  be  a  Bureaucracy,  will  be  attempted 
or  achieved.  Our  wealthy  rulers  will  be  in  the 
position  which  grumblers  in  the  world  of  sport 
sometimes  attribute  to  some  of  the  "gentle- 
men" players.  They  assert  that  some  of  these 
are  paid  like  any  professional;  only  their  pay 
is  called  their  expenses.  This  system  might 
run  side  by  side  with  a  theory  of  equal  wages, 
as  absolute  as  that  once  laid  down  by  Mr.  Ber- 
nard Shaw.  By  the  theory  of  the  State,  Mr. 
Herbert  Samuel  and  Mr.  Lloyd  George  might 
be  humble  citizens,  drudging  for  their  four- 
pence  a  day ;  and  no  better  off  than  porters  and 


THE  MASK  OF  SOCIALISM  69 

coal-heavers.  If  there  were  presented  to  our 
mere  senses  what  appeared  to  be  the  form  of 
Mr.  Herbert  Samuel  in  an  astrakhan  coat  and 
a  motor-car,  we  should  find  the  record  of  the 
expenditure  (if  we  could  find  it  at  all)  under 
the  heading  of  "Speed  Limit  Extension  En- 
quiry Commission."  If  it  fell  to  our  lot  to  be- 
hold (with  the  eye  of  flesh)  what  seemed  to  be 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  lying  in  a  hammock  and 
smoking  a  costly  cigar,  we  should  know  that 
the  expenditure  would  be  divided  between  the 
"Condition  of  Rope  and  Netting  Investigation 
Department,"  and  the  "State  of  Cuban  To- 
bacco Trade:  Imperial  Inspector's  Report." 
Such  is  the  society  I  think  they  will  build 
unless  we  can  knock  it  down  as  fast  as  they 
build  it.  Everything  in  it,  tolerable  or  intol- 
erable, will  have  but  one  use ;  and  that  use  what 
our  ancestors  used  to  call  usance  or  usury.  Its 
art  may  be  good  or  bad,  but  it  will  be  an  ad- 
vertisement for  usurers;  its  literature  may  be 


70  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

good  or  bad,  but  it  will  appeal  to  the  patronage 
of  usurers ;  its  scientific  selection  will  select  ac- 
cording to  the  needs  of  usurers ;  its  religion  will 
be  just  charitable  enough  to  pardon  usurers; 
its  penal  system  will  be  just  cruel  enough  to 
crush  all  the  critics  of  usurers:  the  truth  of  it 
will  be  Slavery:  and  the  title  of  it  may  quite 
possibly  be  Socialism. 


THE  ESCAPE 

We  watched  you  building,  stone  by  stone, 
The    well-washed    cells    and    well-washed 
graves 
We  shall  inhabit  but  not  own 

When  Britons  ever  shall  be  slaves; 
The  water's  waiting  in  the  trough. 

The  tame  oats  sown  are  portioned  free, 
There  is  Enough,  and  just  Enough, 
And  all  is  ready  now  but  we. 

But  you  have  not  caught  us  yet,  my 

lords. 
You  have  us  still  to  get. 
A  sorry  army  you'd  have  got. 
Its  flags  are  rags  that  float  and  rot. 
Its  drums  are  empty  pan  and  pot. 
Its  baggage  is — an  empty  cot ; 
But  you  have  not  caught  us  yet. 

A  little;  and  we  might  have  slipped — 

When  came  your  rumours  and  your  sales 
And  the  foiled  rich  men,  feeble-lipped. 

Said  and  unsaid  their  sorry  tales; 
Great  God !    It  needs  a  bolder  brow 

To  keep  ten  sheep  inside  a  pen. 
And  we  are  sheep  no  longer  now ; 

You  are  but  Masters.    We  are  Men. 
71 


72  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

We  give  you  all  good  thanks,  my  lords, 
We  buy  at  easy  price ; 
Thanks  for  the  thousands  that  you  stole, 
The  bribes  by  wire,  the  bets  on  coal, 
The  knowledge  of  that  naked  whole 
That  hath  delivered  our  flesh  and  soul 
Out  of  your  Paradise. 

We  had  held  safe  your  parks ;  but  when 
Men  taunted  you  with  bribe  and  fee. 
We  only  saw  the  Lord  of  Men 

Grin  like  an  Ape  and  climb  a  tree ; 
And  humbly  had  we  stood  without 

Your  princely  barns ;  did  we  not  see 
In  pointed  faces  peering  out 

What  Rats  now  own  the  granary. 
It  is  too  late,  too  late,  my  lords, 
We  give  you  back  your  grace  i 
You  cannot  with  all  cajoling 
Make  the  wet  ditch,  or  winds  that  sting, 
Lost   pride,   or   the   pawned   wedding 

rings. 
Or  drink  or  Death  a  blacker  thing 
Than  a  smile  upon  your  face. 


THE  NEW  RAID 

The  two  kinds  of  social  reform,  one  of  which 
might  conceivably  free  us  at  last  while  the  other 
would  certainly  enslave  us  forever,  are  ex- 
hibited in  an  easy  working  model  in  the  two 
efforts  that  have  been  made  for  the  soldiers' 
wives — I  mean  the  effort  to  increase  their  al- 
lowance and  the  effort  to  curtail  their  alleged 
drinking.  In  the  preliminary  consideration, 
at  any  rate,  we  must  see  the  second  question  as 
quite  detached  from  our  own  sympathies  on  the 
special  subject  of  fermented  liquor.  It  could 
be  applied  to  any  other  pleasure  or  ornament 
of  life;  it  will  be  applied  to  every  other  pleas- 
ure and  ornament  of  life  if  the  Capitalist  cam- 
paign can  succeed.  The  argument  we  know; 
but  it  cannot  be  too  often  made  clear.    An  em- 

73 


74  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

ployer,  let  us  say,  pays  a  seamstress  twopence 
a  day,  and  she  does  not  seem  to  thrive  on  it. 
So  little,  perhaps,  does  she  thrive  on  it  that  the 
employer  has  even  some  difficulty  in  thriving 
upon  her.  There  are  only  two  things  that  he 
can  do,  and  the  distinction  between  them  cuts 
the  whole  social  and  political  world  in  two.  It 
is  a  touchstone  by  which  we  can — not  some- 
times, but  always — distinguish  economic  equal- 
ity from  servile  social  reform.  He  can  give 
the  girl  some  magnificent  sum,  such  as  sixpence 
a  day,  to  do  as  she  likes  with,  and  trust  that  her 
improved  health  and  temper  will  work  for  the 
benefit  of  his  business.  Or  he  may  keep  her  to 
the  original  sum  of  a  shilling  a  week,  but  ear- 
mark each  of  the  pennies  to  be  used  or  not  to 
be  used  for  a  particular  purpose.  If  she  must 
not  spend  this  penny  on  a  bunch  of  violets,  or 
that  penny  on  a  novelette,  or  the  other  penny 
on  a  toy  for  some  baby,  it  is  possible  that  she 
will  concentrate  her  expenditure  more  upon 


THE  NEW  EAID  75 

physical  necessities,  and  so  become,  from  the 
employer's  point  of  view,  a  more  efficient  per- 
son. Without  the  trouble  of  adding  twopence 
to  her  wages,  he  has  added  twopenny- worth 
to  her  food.  In  short,  she  has  the  holy  satis- 
faction of  being  worth  more  without  being  paid 
more. 

This  Capitalist  is  an  ingenious  person,  and 
has  many  polished  characteristics ;  but  I  think 
the  most  singular  thing  about  him  is  his  stag- 
gering lack  of  shame.  Neither  the  hour  of 
death  nor  the  day  of  reckoning,  neither  the  tent 
of  exile  nor  the  house  of  mourning,  neither 
chivalry  nor  patriotism,  neither  womanhood 
nor  widowhood,  is  safe  at  this  supreme  moment 
from  his  dirty  little  expedient  of  dieting  the 
slave.  As  similar  bullies,  when  they  collect  the 
slum  rents,  put  a  foot  in  the  open  door,  these 
are  always  ready  to  push  in  a  muddy  wedge 
wherever  there  is  a  slit  in  a  sundered  household 
or  a  crack  in  a  broken  heart.    To  a  man  of  any 


76  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

manhood  nothing  can  be  conceived  more  loath- 
some and  sacrilegious  than  even  so  much  as 
asking  whether  a  woman  who  has  given  up  all 
she  loved  to  death  and  the  fatherland  has  or 
has  not  shown  some  weakness  in  her  seeking 
for  self -comfort.  I  know  not  in  which  of  the 
two  cases  I  should  count  myself  the  baser  for 
inquiring — a  case  where  the  charge  was  false 
or  a  case  where  it  was  true.  But  the  philan- 
thropic employer  of  the  sort  I  describe  is  not 
a  man  of  any  manhood ;  in  a  sense  he  is  not  a 
man  at  all.  He  shows  some  consciousness  of 
the  fact  when  he  calls  his  workers  "men"  as 
distinct  from  masters.  He  cannot  comprehend 
the  gallantry  of  costermongers  or  the  delicacy 
that  is  quite  common  among  cabmen.  He  finds 
this  social  reform  by  half -rations  on  the  whole 
to  his  mercantile  profit,  and  it  will  be  hard  to 
get  him  to  think  of  anything  else. 

But  there  are  people  assisting  him,  people 
like  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  who  know 


THE  NEW  RAID  77 

not  their  right  hand  from  their  left,  and  to 
these  we  may  legitimately  address  our  remon- 
strance and  a  resume  of  some  of  the  facts  they 
do  not  know.  The  Duchess  of  Marlborough  is, 
I  believe,  an  American,  and  this  separates  her 
from  the  problem  in  a  special  way,  because  the 
drink  question  in  America  is  entirely  different 
from  the  drink  question  in  England.  But  I 
wish  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough  would  pin 
up  in  her  private  study,  side  by  side  with  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  a  document  re- 
cording the  following  simple  truths :  ( 1 )  Beer, 
which  is  largely  drunk  in  public-houses,  is  not 
a  spirit  or  a  grog  or  a  cocktail  or  a  drug.  It  is 
the  common  English  liquid  for  quenching  the 
thirst;  it  is  so  still  among  innumerable  gentle- 
men, and,  until  very  lately,  was  so  among  in- 
numerable ladies.  Most  of  us  remember  dames 
of  the  last  generation  whose  manners  were  fit 
for  Versailles,  and  who  drank  ale  or  stout  as  a 
matter  of  course.     Schoolboys  drank  ale  as  a 


78  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

matter  of  course,  and  their  schoolmasters  gave 
it  to  them  as  a  matter  of  course.  To  tell  a  poor 
woman  that  she  must  not  have  any  until  half 
the  day  is  over  is  simply  cracked,  like  telling 
a  dog  or  a  child  that  he  must  not  have  water. 
(2)  The  public-house  is  not  a  secret  rendezvous 
of  bad  characters.  It  is  the  open  and  obvious 
place  for  a  certain  purpose,  which  all  men  used 
for  that  purpose  until  the  rich  began  to  be 
snobs  and  the  poor  to  become  slaves.  One 
might  as  well  warn  people  against  Willesden 
Junction.  (3)  Many  poor  people  live  in 
houses  where  they  cannot,  without  great  prepa- 
ration, offer  hospitality.  (4)  The  climate  of 
these  picturesque  islands  does  not  favour  con- 
ducting long  conversations  with  one's  oldest 
friends  on  an  iron  seat  in  the  park.  (5)  Half- 
past  eleven  a.m.  is  not  early  in  the  day  for  a 
woman  who  gets  up  before  six.  (6)  The  bodies 
and  minds  of  these  women  belong  to  God  and 
to  themselves. 


THE  NEW  NAME 

Something  has  come  into  our  community, 
which  is  strong  enough  to  save  our  community ; 
but  which  has  not  yet  got  a  name.  Let  no  one 
fancy  I  confess  any  unreahty  when  I  confess 
the  namelessness.  The  morality  called  Puri- 
tanism, the  tendency  called  Liberalism,  the  re- 
action called  Tory  Democracy,  had  not  only 
long  been  powerful,  but  had  practically  done 
most  of  their  work,  before  these  actual  names 
were  attached  to  them.  Nevertheless,  I  think 
it  would  be  a  good  thing  to  have  some  portable 
and  practicable  way  of  referring  to  those  who 
think  as  we  do  in  our  main  concern.  Which  is, 
that  men  in  England  are  ruled,  at  this  minute 
by  the  clock,  by  brutes  who  refuse  them  bread, 
by  liars  who  refuse  them  news,  and  by  fools 

79 


80  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

who  cannot  govern,  and  therefore  wish  to  en- 
slave. 

Let  me  explain  first  why  I  am  not  satisfied 
with  the  word  commonly  used,  which  I  have 
often  used  myself;  and  which,  in  some  contexts, 
is  quite  the  right  word  to  use.  I  mean  the  word 
"rebel."  Passing  over  the  fact  that  many  who 
understand  the  justice  of  our  cause  (as  a  great 
many  at  the  Universities)  would  still  use  the 
word  "rebel"  in  its  old  and  strict  sense  as  mean- 
ing only  a  disturber  of  just  rule.  I  pass  to  a 
much  more  practical  point.  The  word  "rebel" 
understates  our  cause.  It  is  much  too  mild; 
it  lets  our  enemies  off  much  too  easily.  There 
is  a  tradition  in  all  western  life  and  letters  of 
Prometheus  defying  the  stars,  of  man  at  war 
with  the  Universe,  and  dreaming  what  nature 
had  never  dared  to  dream.  All  this  is  valuable 
in  its  place  and  proportion.  But  it  has  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  our  case ;  or  rather  it  very 
much  weakens  it.    The  plutocrats  will  be  only 


THE  NEW  NAME  81 

too  pleased  if  we  profess  to  preach  a  new 
morality;  for  they  know  jolly  well  that  they 
have  broken  the  old  one.  They  will  be  only 
too  pleased  to  be  able  to  say  that  we,  by  our 
own  confession,  are  merely  restless  and  nega- 
tive ;  that  we  are  only  what  we  call  rebels  and 
they  call  cranks.  But  it  is  not  true;  and  we 
must  not  concede  it  to  them  for  a  moment. 
The  model  millionaire  is  more  of  a  crank  than 
the  Socialists;  just  as  Nero  was  more  of  a 
crank  than  the  Christians.  And  avarice  has 
gone  mad  in  the  governing  class  to-day,  just 
as  lust  went  mad  in  the  circle  of  Nero.  By  all 
the  working  and  orthodox  standards  of  sanity, 
capitalism  is  insane.  I  should  not  say  to  Mr. 
Rockefeller  "I  am  a  rebel."  I  should  say  "I 
am  a  respectable  man:  and  you  are  not." 


82  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Our  Lawless  Enemies 

But  the  vital  point  is  that  the  confession  of 
mere  rebellion  softens  the  startling  lawlessness 
of  our  enemies.  Suppose  a  publisher's  clerk 
politely  asked  his  employer  for  a  rise  in  his 
salary;  and,  on  being  refused,  said  he  must 
leave  the  employment?  Suppose  the  employer 
knocked  him  down  with  a  ruler,  tied  him  up  as 
a  brown  paper  parcel,  addressed  him  (in  a  fine 
business  hand)  to  the  Governor  of  Rio  Janeiro 
and  then  asked  the  policeman  to  promise  never 
to  arrest  him  for  what  he  had  done  ?  That  is  a 
precise  copy,  in  every  legal  and  moral  prin- 
ciple, of  the  "deportation  of  the  strikers." 
They  were  assaulted  and  kidnapped  for  not 
accepting  a  contract,  and  for  nothing  else;  and 
the  act  was  so  avowedly  criminal  that  the  law 
had  to  be  altered  afterwards  to  cover  the  crime. 
Now  suppose  some  postal  official,  between  here 
and  Rio  Janeiro,  had  noticed  a  faint  kicking 


THE  NEW  NAME  83 

inside  the  brown  paper  parcel,  and  had  at- 
tempted to  ascertain  the  cause.  And  suppose 
the  clerk  could  only  explain,  in  a  muffled  voice 
through  the  brown  paper,  that  he  was  by  con- 
stitution and  temperament  a  Rebel.  Don't 
you  see  that  he  would  be  rather  understating 
his  case?  Don't  you  see  he  would  be  bearing 
his  injuries  much  too  meekly?  They  might 
take  him  out  of  the  parcel ;  but  they  would  very 
possibly  put  him  into  a  mad-house  instead. 
Symbolically  speaking,  that  is  what  they  would 
like  to  do  with  us.  Symbolically  speaking,  the 
dirty  misers  who  rule  us  will  put  us  in  a  mad-^ 
house — unless  we  can  put  them  there. 

Or  suppose  a  bank  cashier  were  admittedly 
allowed  to  take  the  money  out  of  the  till,  and 
put  it  loose  in  his  pocket,  more  or  less  mixed 
up  with  his  own  money*  afterwards  laying 
some  of  both  (at  different  odds)  on  "Blue 
Murder"  for  the  Derby.  Suppose  when  some 
depositor  asked  mildly  what  day  the  account- 


84  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

ants  came,  he  smote  that  astonished  inquirer  on 
the  nose,  crying:  "Slanderer!  Mud-slinger !" 
and  suppose  he  then  resigned  his  position. 
Suppose  no  books  were  shown.  Suppose  when 
the  new  cashier  came  to  be  initiated  into  his  du- 
ties, the  old  cashier  did  not  tell  him  about  the 
money,  but  confided  it  to  the  honour  and  deli- 
cacy of  his  own  maiden  aunt  at  Cricklewood. 
Suppose  he  then  went  off  in  a  yacht  to  visit  the 
whale  fisheries  of  the  North  Sea.  Well,  in 
every  moral  and  legal  principle,  that  is  a  pre- 
cise account  of  the  dealings  with  the  Party 
Funds.  But  what  would  the  banker  say? 
What  would  the  clients  say?  One  thing,  I 
think,  I  can  venture  to  promise;  the  banker 
would  not  march  up  and  down  the  office  ex- 
claiming in  rapture,  "I'm  a  rebel !  That's  what 
I  am,  a  rebel!"  And  if  he  said  to  the  first  in- 
dignant depositor  "You  are  a  rebel,"  I  fear  the 
depositor  might  answer,  "You  are  a  robber." 
We  have  no  need  to  elaborate  arguments  for 


THE  NEW  NAME  85 

breaking  the  law.  The  capitalists  have  broken 
the  law.  We  have  no  need  of  further  morali- 
ties. They  have  broken  their  own  morality. 
It  is  as  if  you  were  to  run  down  the 
street  shouting,  "Communism I  Communism! 
Share!  Share!"  after  a  man  who  had  run 
away  with  your  watch. 

We  want  a  term  that  will  tell  everybody  that 
there  is,  by  the  common  standard,  frank  fraud 
and  cruelty  pushed  to  their  fierce  extreme ;  and 
that  we  are  fighting  them.  We  are  not  in  a 
state  of  "divine  discontent";  we  are  in  an  en- 
tirely human  and  entirely  reasonable  rage. 
We  say  we  have  been  swindled  and  oppressed, 
and  we  are  quite  ready  and  able  to  prove  it 
before  any  tribunal  that  allows  us  to  call  a 
swindler  a  swindler.  It  is  the  protection  of 
the  present  system  that  most  of  its  tribunals 
do  not.  I  cannot  at  the  moment  think  of  any 
party  name  that  would  particularly  distinguish 
us  from  our  more  powerful  and  prosperous  op- 


86  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

ponents,  unless  it  were  the  name  the  old  Jacob- 
ites gave  themselves ;  the  Honest  Party. 

Captured  Our  Standards 

I  think  it  is  plain  that  for  the  purpose  of 
facing  these  new  and  infamous  modern  facts, 
we  cannot,  with  any  safety,  depend  on  any  of 
the  old  nineteenth  century  names ;  Socialist,  or 
Communist,  or  Radical,  or  Liberal,  or  Labour. 
They  are  all  honourable  names ;  they  all  stand, 
or  stood,  for  things  in  which  we  may  still  be- 
lieve; we  can  still  apply  them  to  other  prob- 
lems ;  but  not  to  this  one.  We  have  no  longer 
a  monopoly  of  these  names.  Let  it  be  under- 
stood that  I  am  not  speaking  here  of  the  philo- 
sophical problem  of  their  meaning,  but  of  the 
practical  problem  of  their  use.  When  I  called 
myself  a  Radical  I  knew  Mr.  Balfour  would 
not  call  himself  a  Radical ;  therefore  there  was 
some  use  in  the  word.  ^Vhen  I  called  myself 
a  Socialist  I  knew  Lord  Penrhyn  would  not 


THE  NEW  NAME  87 

call  himself  a  Socialist;  therefore  there  was 
some  use  in  the  word.  But  the  capitalists,  in 
that  aggressive  march  which  is  the  main  fact 
of  our  time,  have  captured  our  standards,  both 
in  the  military  and  philosophic  sense  of  the 
word.  And  it  is  useless  for  us  to  march  under 
colours  which  they  can  carry  as  well  as  we. 

Do  you  believe  in  Democracy?  The  devils 
also  believe  and  tremble.  Do  you  believe  in 
Trades  Unionism?  The  Labour  Members  also 
believe;  and  tremble  like  a  falling  teetotum. 
Do  you  believe  in  the  State  ?  The  Samuels  also 
believe,  and  grin.  Do  you  believe  in  the  cen- 
tralisation of  Empire?  So  did  Beit.  Do  you 
believe  in  the  decentralisation  of  Empire  ?  So 
does  Albu.  Do  you  believe  in  the  brotherhood 
of  men :  and  do  you,  dear  brethren,  believe  that 
Brother  Arthur  Henderson  does  not?  Do  you 
cry,  *'The  world  for  the  workers !"  and  do  you 
imagine  Philip  Snowden  would  not  ?  What  we 
need  is  a  name  that  shall  declare,  not  that  the 


88  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

modern  treason  and  tyranny  are  bad,  but  that 
they  are  quite  literally,  intolerable :  and  that  we 
mean  to  act  accordingly.  I  really  think  "the 
Limits"  would  be  as  good  a  name  as  any.  But, 
anyhow,  something  is  born  among  us  that  is  as 
strong  as  an  infant  Hercules:  and  it  is  part 
of  my  prejudices  to  want  it  christened.  I  ad- 
vertise for  godfathers  and  godmothers. 


A  WORKMAN'S  HISTORY  OF 
ENGLAND 

A  THING  which  does  not  exist  and  which  is 
very  much  wanted  is  "A  Working-Man's  His- 
tory of  England."  I  do  not  mean  a  history 
written  for  working  men  (there  are  whole  dust- 
bins of  them),  I  mean  a  history,  written  by 
working  men  or  from  the  working  men's  stand- 
point. I  wish  five  generations  of  a  fisher's  or 
a  miner's  family  could  incarnate  themselves  in 
one  man  and  tell  the  story. 

It  is  impossible  to  ignore  altogether  any 
comment  coming  from  so  eminent  a  literary 
artist  as  Mr.  Laurence  Housman,  but  I  do  not 
deal  here  so  specially  with  his  well  known  con- 
viction about  Votes  for  Women,  as  with  an- 
other idea  which  is,  I  think,  rather  at  the  back 

89 


90  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

of  it,  if  not  with  him  at  least  with  others;  and 
which  concerns  this  matter  of  the  true  story  of 
England.  For  the  true  story  is  so  entirely  dif- 
ferent from  the  false  official  story  that  the 
official  classes  tell  that  by  this  time  the  working 
class  itself  has  largely  forgotten  its  own  ex- 
perience. Either  story  can  be  quite  logically 
linked  up  with  Female  Suffrage,  which,  there- 
fore, I  leave  where  it  is  for  the  moment ;  merely 
confessing  that,  so  long  as  we  get  hold  of  the 
right  story  and  not  the  wrong  story,  it  seems 
to  me  a  matter  of  secondary  importance 
whether  we  link  it  up  with  Female  Suffrage  or 
not. 

Now  the  ordinary  version  of  recent  English 
history  that  most  moderately  educated  people 
have  absorbed  from  childhood  is  something  like 
this.  That  we  emerged  slowly  from  a  semi- 
barbarism  in  which  all  the  power  and  wealth 
were  in  the  hands  of  Kings  and  a  few  nobles ; 
that  the  King's  power  was  broken  first  and 


WORKMAN'S  HISTORY  91 

then  in  due  time  that  of  the  nobles,  that  this 
piece-meal  improvement  ^yas  brought  about  by 
one  class  after  another  waking  up  to  a  sense  of 
citizenship  and  demanding  a  place  in  the  na- 
tional councils,  frequently  by  riot  or  violence; 
and  that  in  consequence  of  such  menacing  pop- 
ular action,  the  franchise  was  granted  to  one 
class  after  another  and  used  more  and  more  to 
improve  the  social  conditions  of  those  classes, 
until  we  practically  became  a  democracy,  save 
for  such  exceptions  as  that  of  the  women.  I 
do  not  think  anyone  will  deny  that  something 
like  that  is  the  general  idea  of  the  educated  man 
who  reads  a  newspaper  and  of  the  newspaper 
that  he  reads.  That  is  the  view  current  at  pub- 
lic schools  and  colleges ;  it  is  part  of  the  culture 
of  all  the  classes  that  count  for  much  in  gov- 
ernment ;  and  there  is  not  one  word  of  truth  in 
it  from  beginning  to  end. 


92  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

That  Great  Reform  Bill 
Wealth  and  political  power  were  very  much 
more  popularly  distributed  in  the  Middle  Ages 
than  they  are  now;  but  we  will  pass  all  that 
and  consider  recent  history.  The  franchise  has 
never  been  largely  and,  liberally  granted  in 
England ;  half  the  males  have  no  vote  and  are 
not  likely  to  get  one.  It  was  never  granted  in 
reply  to  pressure  from  awakened  sections  of 
the  democracy;  in  every  case  there  was  a  per- 
fectly clear  motive  for  granting  it  solely  for 
the  convenience  of  the  aristocrats.  The  Great 
Reform  Bill  was  not  passed  in  response  to 
such  riots  as  that  which  destroyed  a  Castle; 
nor  did  the  men  who  destroyed  the  Castle  get 
any  advantage  whatever  out  of  the  Great  Re- 
form Bill.  The  Great  Reform  Bill  was  passed 
in  order  to  seal  an  alliance  between  the  landed 
aristocrats  and  the  rich  manufacturers  of  the 
north  (an  alliance  that  rules  us  still) ;  and  the 
chief  object  of  that  alliance  was  to  prevent  the 


WORKMAN'S  HISTORY  93 

English  populace  getting  any  political  power 
in  the  general  excitement  after  the  French 
Revolution.  No  one  can  read  Macaulay's 
speech  on  the  Chartists,  for  instance,  and  not 
see  that  this  is  so.  Disraeli's  further  extension 
of  the  suffrage  was  not  effected  by  the  intel- 
lectual vivacity  and  pure  republican  theory  of 
the  mid- Victorian  agricultural  labourer ;  it  was 
effected  by  a  politician  who  saw  an  opportunity 
to  dish  the  Whigs,  and  guessed  that  certain 
orthodoxies  in  the  more  prosperous  artisan 
might  yet  give  him  a  balance  against  the  com- 
mercial Radicals.  And  while  this  very  thin 
game  of  wire-pulling  with  the  mere  abstraction 
of  the  vote  was  being  worked  entirely  by  the 
oligarchs  and  entirely  in  their  interests,  the 
solid  and  real  thing  that  was  going  on  was  the 
steady  despoiling  of  the  poor  of  all  power  or 
wealth,  until  they  find  themselves  to-day  upon 
the  threshold  of  slavery.  That  is  The  Work- 
ing Man's  History  of  England. 


94  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Now,  as  I  have  said,  I  care  comparatively 
little  what  is  done  with  the  mere  voting  part  of 
the  matter,  so  long  as  it  is  not  done  in  such  a 
way  as  to  allow  the  plutocrat  to  escape  his  re- 
sponsibility for  his  crimes,  by  pretending  to  be 
much  more  progressive,  or  much  more  sus- 
ceptible to  popular  protest,  than  he  ever  has 
been.  And  there  is  this  danger  in  many  of 
those  who  have  answered  me.  One  of  them, 
for  instance,  says  that  women  have  been  forced 
into  their  present  industrial  situations  by  the 
same  iron  economic  laws  that  have  compelled 
men.  I  say  that  men  have  not  been  compelled 
by  iron  economic  laws,  but  in  the  main  by  the 
coarse  and  Christless  cynicism  of  other  men. 
But,  of  course,  this  way  of  talking  is  exactly 
in  accordance  with  the  fashionable  and  official 
version  of  English  history.  Thus,  you  will 
read  that  the  monasteries,  places  where  men  of 
the  poorest  origin  could  be  powerful,  grew  cor- 
rupt and  gradually  decayed.    Or  you  will  read 


WORKMAN'S  HISTORY  95 

that  the  medieval  guilds  of  free  workmen 
yielded  at  last  to  an  inevitable  economic  law. 
You  will  read  this ;  and  you  will  be  reading  lies. 
They  might  as  well  say  that  Julius  Caesar  grad- 
ually decayed  at  the  foot  of  Pompey's  statue. 
You  might  as  well  say  that  Abraham  Lincoln 
yielded  at  last  to  an  inevitable  economic  law. 
The  free  mediaeval  guilds  did  not  decay;  they 
were  murdered.  Solid  men  with  solid  guns 
and  halberds,  armed  with  lawful  warrants  from 
living  statesmen  broke  up  their  corporations 
and  took  away  their  hard  cash  from  them.  In 
the  same  way  the  people  in  Cradley  Heath  are 
no  more  victims  of  a  necessary  economic  law 
than  the  people  in  Putumayo.  They  are  vic- 
tims of  a  very  terrible  creature,  of  whose  sins 
much  has  been  said  since  the  beginning  of  the 
world;  and  of  whom  it  was  said  of  old,  "Let 
us  fall  into  the  hands  of  God,  for  His  mercies 
are  great ;  but  let  us  not  fall  into  the  hands  of 
Man." 


96  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

The  Capitalist  Is  in  the  Dock 

Now  it  is  this  offering  of  a  false  economic 
excuse  for  the  sweater  that  is  the  danger  in 
perpetually  saying  that  the  poor  woman  will 
use  the  vote  and  that  the  poor  man  has  not  used 
it.  The  poor  man  is  prevented  from  using  it; 
prevented  by  the  rich  man,  and  the  poor  woman 
would  be  prevented  in  exactly  the  same  gross 
and  stringent  style.  I  do  not  deny,  of  course, 
that  there  is  something  in  the  English  tem- 
perament, and  in  the  heritage  of  the  last  few 
centuries  that  makes  the  English  workman 
more  tolerant  of  wrong  than  most  foreign 
workmen  would  be.  But  this  only  slightly 
modifies  the  main  fact  of  the  moral  responsi- 
bility. To  take  an  imperfect  parallel,  if  we 
said  that  negro  slaves  would  have  rebelled  if 
negroes  had  been  more  intelligent,  we  should 
be  saying  what  is  reasonable.  But  if  we  were 
to  say  that  it  could  by  any  possibility  be  rep- 


WORKMAN'S  HISTORY  97 

resented  as  being  the  negro's  fault  that  he  was 
at  that  moment  in  America  and  not  in  Africa, 
we  should  be  saying  what  is  frankly  unrea- 
sonable. It  is  every  bit  as  unreasonable  to  say 
the  mere  supineness  of  the  English  workmen 
has  put  them  in  the  capitalist  slave-yard.  The 
capitalist  has  put  them  in  the  capitalist  slave- 
yard  ;  and  very  cunning  smiths  have  hammered 
the  chains.  It  is  just  this  creative  criminahty 
in  the  authors  of  the  system  that  we  must  not 
allow  to  be  slurred  over.  The  capitalist  is  in 
the  dock  to-day;  and  so  far  as  I  at  least  can 
prevent  him,  he  shall  not  get  out  of  it. 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  AND 
THE  IRISH 

It  will  be  long  before  the  poison  of  the  Party 
System  is  worked  out  of  the  body  politic. 
Some  of  its  most  indirect  effects  are  the  most 
dangerous.  One  that  is  very  dangerous  just 
now  is  this:  that  for  most  Englishmen  the 
Party  System  falsifies  history,  and  especially 
the  history  of  revolutions.  It  falsifies  history 
because  it  simplifies  history.  It  paints  every- 
thing either  Blue  or  Buff  in  the  style  of  its 
own  silly  circus  politics :  while  a  real  revolution 
has  as  many  colours  as  the  sunrise — or  the  end 
of  the  world.  And  if  we  do  not  get  rid  of  this 
error  we  shall  make  very  bad  blunders  about 
the  real  revolution  which  seems  to  grow  more 

98 


THE  REVOLUTION  AND  THE  IRISH    99 

and  more  probable,  especially  among  the  Irish. 
And  any  hmnan  familiarity  with  history  will 
teach  a  man  this  first  of  all:  that  Party  prac- 
tically does  not  exist  in  a  real  revolution.  It  is 
a  game  for  quiet  times. 

If  you  take  a  boy  who  has  been  to  one  of 
those  big  private  schools  which  are  falsely 
called  the  Public  Schools,  and  another  boy  who 
has  been  to  one  of  those  large  public  schools 
which  are  falsely  called  the  Board  Schools,  you 
will  find  sonie  differences  between  the  two, 
chiefly  a  difference  in  the  management  of  the 
voice.  But  you  will  find  they  are  both  English 
in  a  special  way,  and  that  their  education  has 
been  essentially  the  same.  They  are  ignorant 
on  the  same  subjects.  They  have  never  heard 
of  the  same  plain  facts.  They  have  been  taught 
the  wrong  answer  to  the  same  confusing  ques- 
tion. There  is  one  fundamental  element  in 
the  attitude  of  the  Eton  master  talking  about 
"playing    the    game,"    and    the    elementary 


100  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

teacher  training  gutter-snipes  to  sing,  "What 
is  the  Meaning  of  Empire  Day?"  And  the 
name  of  that  element  is  "unhistoric."  It  knows 
nothing  really  about  England,  still  less  about 
Ireland  or  France,  and,  least  of  all,  of  course, 
about  anything  like  the  French  Revolution. 

Revolution  by  Snap  Division 

Now  what  general  notion  does  the  ordinary 
English  boy,  thus  taught  to  utter  one  ignorance 
in  one  of  two  accents,  get  and  keep  through 
life  about  the  French  Revolution?  It  is  the 
notion  of  the  English  House  of  Commons  with 
an  enormous  Radical  majority  on  one  side  of 
the  table  and  a  small  Tory  minority  on  the 
other;  the  majority  voting  solid  for  a  Repub- 
lic, the  minority  voting  solid  for  a  Monarchy; 
two  teams  tramping  through  two  lobbies  with 
no  difference  between  their  methods  and  ours, 
except  that  (owing  to  some  habit  peculiar  to 
Gaul)  the  brief  intervals  were  brightened  by 


THE  REVOLUTION  AND  THE  IRISH    101 

a  riot  or  a  massacre,  instead  of  by  a  whisky 
and  soda  and  a  Marconi  tip.  Novels  are  much 
more  reliable  than  histories  in  such  matters. 
For  though  an  English  novel  about  France 
does  not  tell  the  truth  about  France,  it  does 
tell  the  truth  about  England;  and  more  than 
half  the  histories  never  tell  the  truth  about 
anything.  And  popular  fiction,  I  think,  bears 
witness  to  the  general  English  impression. 
The  French  Revolution  is  a  snap  division  with 
an  unusual  turnover  of  votes.  On  the  one  side 
stand  a  king  and  queen  who  are  good  but  weak, 
surrounded  by  nobles  with  rapiers  drawn ;  some 
of  whom  are  good,  many  of  whom  are  wicked, 
all  of  whom  are  good-looking.  Against  these 
there  is  a  formless  mob  of  human  beings,  wear- 
ing red  caps  and  seemingly  insane,  who  all 
blindly  follow  ruffians  who  are  also  rhetori- 
cians ;  some  of  whom  die  repentant  and  others 
unrepentant  towards  the  end  of  the  fourth  act. 
The  leaders  of  this  boiling  mass  of  all  men 


102  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

melted  into  one  are  called  Mirabeau,  Robes- 
pierre, Danton,  Marat,  and  so  on.  And  it  is 
conceded  that  their  united  frenzy  may  have 
been  forced  on  them  by  the  evils  of  the  old 
regime. 

That,  I  think,  is  the  commonest  English  view 
of  the  French  Revolution ;  and  it  will  not  sur- 
vive the  reading  of  two  pages  of  any  real  speech 
or  letter  of  the  period.  These  human  beings 
were  human ;  varied,  complex  and  inconsistent. 
But  the  rich  Englishman,  ignorant  of  revolu- 
tions, would  hardly  believe  you  if  you  told  him 
some  of  the  common  human  subtleties  of  the 
case.  Tell  him  that  Robespierre  threw  the  red 
cap  in  the  dirt  in  disgust,  while  the  king  had 
worn  it  with  a  broad  grin,  so  to  speak ;  tell  him 
that  Danton,  the  fierce  founder  of  the  Repub- 
lic of  the  Terror,  said  quite  sincerely  to  a 
noble,  "I  am  more  monarchist  than  you;"  tell 
him  that  the  Terror  really  seems  to  have  been 
brought  to  an  end  chiefly  by  the  efforts  of  peo- 


THE  EEVOLUTION  AND  THE  IRISH    103 

pie  who  particularly  wanted  to  go  on  with  it — 
and  he  will  not  believe  these  things.  He  will 
not  believe  them  because  he  has  no  humility, 
and  therefore  no  realism.  He  has  never  been 
inside  himself ;  and  so  could  never  be  inside  an- 
other man.  The  truth  is  that  in  the  French 
affair  everybody  occupied  an  individual  posi- 
tion. Every  man  talked  sincerely,  if  not  be- 
cause he  was  sincere,  then  because  he  was  an- 
gry. Robespierre  talked  even  more  about  God 
than  about  the  Republic  because  he  cared  even 
more  about  God  than  about  the  Republic. 
Danton  talked  even  more  about  France  than 
about  the  Republic  because  he  cared  even  more 
about  France  than  about  the  Republic. 
Marat  talked  more  about  Humanity  than 
either,  because  that  physician  (though  him- 
self somewhat  needing  a  physician)  really 
cared  about  it.  The  nobles  were  divided, 
each  man  from  the  next.  The  attitude  of 
the  king  was  quite  different  from  the  atti- 


104  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

tude  of  the  queen ;  certainly  much  more  differ- 
ent than  any  differences  between  our  Liberals 
and  Tories  for  the  last  twenty  years.  And  it 
will  sadden  some  of  my  friends  to  remember 
that  it  was  the  king  who  was  the  Liberal  and 
the  queen  who  was  the  Tory.  There  were  not 
two  people,  I  think,  in  that  most  practical 
crisis  who  stood  in  precisely  the  same  attitude 
towards  the  situation.  And  that  is  why,  be- 
tween them,  they  saved  Europe.  It  is  when 
you  really  perceive  the  unity  of  mankind  that 
you  really  perceive  its  variety.  It  is  not  a  flip- 
pancy, it  is  a  very  sacred  truth,  to  say  that 
when  men  really  understand  that  they  are 
brothers  they  instantly  begin  to  fight. 

The  Revival  of  Reality 

Now  these  things  are  repeating  themselves 
with  an  enormous  reality  in  the  Irish  Revolu- 
tion.   You  will  not  be  able  to  make  a  Party 


THE  REVOLUTION  AND  THE  IRISH    105 

System  out  of  the  matter.  Everybody  is  in  re- 
volt; therefore  everybody  is  telHng  the  truth. 
The  Nationahsts  will  go  on  caring  most  for  the 
nation,  as  Danton  and  the  defenders  of  the 
frontier  went  on  caring  most  for  the  nation. 
The  priests  will  go  on  caring  most  for  religion, 
as  Robespierre  went  on  caring  most  for  relig- 
gion.  The  Socialists  will  go  on  caring  most 
for  the  cure  of  physical  suffering,  as  Marat 
went  on  caring  most  for  it.  It  is  out  of  these 
real  differences  that  real  things  can  be  made, 
such  as  the  modern  French  democracy.  For 
by  such  tenacity  everyone  sees  at  last  that  there 
is  something  in  the  other  person's  position. 
And  those  drilled  in  party  disciphne  see  noth- 
ing either  past  or  present.  And  where  there  is 
nothing  there  is  Satan. 

For  a  long  time  past  in  our  politics  there 
has  not  only  been  no  real  battle,  but  no  real 
bargain.  'No  two  men  have  bargained  as  Glad- 
stone and  Parnell  bargained — each  knowing 


106  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

the  other  to  be  a  power.  But  in  real  revolu- 
tions men  discover  that  no  one  man  can  really 
agree  with  another  man  until  he  has  disagreed 
with  him. 


LIBERALISM:    A  SAMPLE 

There  is  a  certain  daily  paper  in  England 
towards  which  I  feel  very  much  as  Tom  Pinch 
felt  towards  Mr.  Pecksniff  immediately  after 
he  had  found  him  out.  The  war  upon  Dickens 
was  part  of  the  general  war  on  all  democrats, 
about  the  eighties  and  nineties,  which  ushered 
in  the  brazen  plutocracy  of  to-day.  And  one 
of  the  things  that  it  was  fashionable  to  say  of 
Dickens  in  drawing-rooms  was  that  he  had  no 
subtlety,  and  could  not  describe  a  complex 
frame  of  mind.  Like  most  other  things  that 
are  said  in  drawing-rooms,  it  was  a  lie.  Dick- 
ens was  a  very  unequal  writer,  and  his  suc- 
cesses alternate  with  his  failures;  but  his  suc- 
cesses are  subtle  quite  as  often  as  they  are  sim- 
ple.   Thus,  to  take  "Martin  Chuzzlewit'*  alone, 

107 


108  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

I  should  call  the  joke  about  the  Lord  No-zoo 
a  simple  joke:  but  I  should  call  the  joke  about 
Mrs.  Todgers's  vision  of  a  wooden  leg  a  subtle 
joke.  And  no  frame  of  mind  was  ever  so  self- 
contradictory  and  yet  so  realistic  as  that  which 
Dickens  describes  when  he  says,  in  effect,  that, 
though  Pinch  knew  now  that  there  had  never 
been  such  a  person  as  Pecksniff,  in  his  ideal 
sense,  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  insult  the 
very  face  and  form  that  had  contained  the  leg- 
end. The  parallel  with  Liberal  journalism  is 
not  perfect;  because  it  was  once  honest;  and 
Pecksniff  presumably  never  was.  And  even 
when  I  come  to  feel  a  final  incompatibility  of 
temper,  Pecksniff  was  not  so  PecksnifRan  as  he 
has  since  become.  But  the  comparison  is  com- 
plete in  so  far  as  I  share  all  the  reluctance  of 
Mr.  Pinch.  Some  old  heathen  king  was  ad- 
vised by  one  of  the  Celtic  saints,  I  think,  to 
burn  what  he  had  adored  and  adore  what  he 
had  burnt.     I  am  quite  ready,  if  anyone  will 


LIBEKALISM:  A  SAMPLE         109 

prove  I  was  wrong,  to  adore  what  I  have 
burnt;  but  I  do  really  feel  an  unwillingness 
verging  upon  weakness  to  burning  what  I  have 
adored.  I  think  it  is  a  weakness  to  be  over- 
come in  times  as  bad  as  these,  when  (as  Mr. 
Orage  wrote  with  something  like  splendid  com- 
mon sense  the  other  day)  there  is  such  a  lot 
to  do  and  so  few  people  who  will  do  it.  So  I 
will  devote  this  article  to  considering  one  case 
of  the  astounding  baseness  to  which  Liberal 
journalism  has  sunk. 

Mental  Breakdown  in  Fleet  Street 

One  of  the  two  or  three  streaks  of  light  on 
our  horizon  can  be  perceived  in  this:  that  the 
moral  breakdown  of  these  papers  has  been  ac- 
companied by  a  mental  breakdown  also.  The 
contemporary  official  paper,  like  the  "Daily 
News"  or  the  "Daily  Chronicle"  (I  mean  in  so 
far  as  it  deals  with  politics),  simply  cannot 


110  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

argue;  and  simply  does  not  pretend  to  argue. 
It  considers  the  solution  which  it  imagines  that 
wealthy  people  want,  and  it  signifies  the  same 
in  the  usual  manner;  which  is  not  by  holding 
up  its  hand,  but  by  falling  on  its  face.  But 
there  is  no  more  curious  quality  in  its  degra- 
dation than  a  sort  of  carelessness,  at  once  of 
hurry  and  fatigue,  with  which  it  flings  down 
its  argument — or  rather  its  refusal  to  argue. 
It  does  not  even  write  sophistry :  it  writes  any- 
thing. It  does  not  so  much  poison  the  reader's 
mind  as  simply  assimie  that  the  reader  hasn't 
got  one.  For  instance,  one  of  these  papers 
printed  an  article  on  Sir  Stuart  Samuel,  who, 
having  broken  the  great  Liberal  statute  against 
corruption,  will  actually,  perhaps,  be  asked  to 
pay  his  own  fine — in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he 
can  well  afford  to  do  so.  The  article  says,  if  I 
remember  aright,  that  the  decision  will  cause 
general  surprise  and  some  indignation.  That 
any  modern  Government  making  a  very  rich 


LIBERALISM:  A  SAMPLE         111 

capitalist  obey  the  law  will  cause  general  sur- 
prise, may  be  true.  Whether  it  will  cause  gen- 
eral indignation  rather  depends  on  whether 
our  social  intercourse  is  entirely  confined  to 
Park  Lane,  or  any  such  pigsties  built  of  gold. 
But  the  journalist  proceeds  to  say,  his  neck  ris- 
ing higher  and  higher  out  of  his  collar,  and  his 
hair  rising  higher  and  higher  on  his  head,  in 
short,  his  resemblance  to  the  Dickens'  original 
increasing  every  instant,  that  he  does  not  mean 
that  the  law  against  corruption  should  be  less 
stringent,  but  that  the  burden  should  be  borne 
by  the  whole  community.  This  may  mean  that 
whenever  a  rich  man  breaks  the  law,  all  the 
poor  men  ought  to  be  made  to  pay  his  fine. 
But  I  will  suppose  a  slightly  less  insane  mean- 
ing. I  will  suppose  it  means  that  the  whole 
power  of  the  commonwealth  should  be  used  to 
prosecute  an  offender  of  this  kind.  That,  of 
course,  can  only  mean  that  the  matter  will  be 
decided  by  that  instrument  which  still  pretends 


112  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

to  represent  the  whole  power  of  the  common- 
wealth. In  other  words,  the  Government  will 
judge  the  Government. 

Now  this  is  a  perfectly  plain  piece  of  brute 
logic.  We  need  not  go  into  the  other  delicious 
things  in  the  article,  as  when  it  says  that  "in 
old  times  Parliament  had  to  be  protected 
against  Royal  invasion  by  the  man  in  the 
street."  Parliament  has  to  be  protected  now 
against  the  man  in  the  street.  Parliament  is 
simply  the  most  detested  and  the  most  detesta- 
ble of  all  our  national  institutions:  all  that  is 
evident  enough.  What  is  interesting  is  the 
blank  and  staring  fallacy  of  the  attempted 
reply. 

When  the  Journalist  Is  Ruined 

A  long  while  ago,  before  all  the  Liberals 
died,  a  Liberal  introduced  a  Bill  to  prevent 
Parliament  being  merely  packed  with  the 
slaves  of  financial  interests.    For  that  purpose 


LIBERALISM:  A  SAMPLE  113 

he  established  the  excellent  democratic  princi- 
ple that  the  private  citizen,  as  such,  might  pro- 
test against  public  corruption.  He  was  called 
the  Common  Informer.  I  believe  the  miser- 
able party  papers  are  really  reduced  to  playing 
on  the  degradation  of  the  two  words  in  modern 
language.  Now  the  word  "common"  in  "Com- 
mon Informer"  means  exactly  what  it  means 
in  "common  sense"  or  "Book  of  Common 
Prayer,"  or  (above  all)  in  "House  of  Com- 
mons." It  does  not  mean  anything  low  or  vul- 
gar; any  more  than  they  do.  The  only  differ- 
ence is  that  the  House  of  Commons  really  is 
low  and  vulgar;  and  the  Common  Informer 
isn't.  It  is  just  the  same  with  the  word  "In- 
former." It  does  not  mean  spy  or  sneak.  It 
means  one  who  gives  information.  It  means 
what  "journalist"  ought  to  mean.  The  only 
difference  is  that  the  Common  Informer  may 
be  paid  if  he  tells  the  truth.  The  common 
journalist  will  be  ruined  if  he  does. 


114  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Now  the  quite  plain  point  before  the  party 
journalist  is  this :  If  he  really  means  that  a  cor- 
rupt bargain  between  a  Government  and  a 
contractor  ought  to  be  judged  by  public  opin- 
ion, he  must  (nowadays)  mean  Parliament; 
that  is,  the  caucus  that  controls  Parliament. 
And  he  must  decide  between  one  of  two  views. 
Either  he  means  that  there  can  be  no  such 
thing  as  a  corrupt  Government.  Or  he  means 
that  it  is  one  of  the  characteristic  qualities  of  a 
corrupt  Government  to  denounce  its  own  cor- 
ruption.   I  laugh;  and  I  leave  him  his  choice. 


THE  FATIGUE  OF  FLEET  STREET 

Why  is  the  modern  party  political  journal- 
ism so  bad?  It  is  worse  even  than  it  intends 
to  be.  It  praises  its  preposterous  party  lead- 
ers through  thick  and  thin;  but  it  somehow 
succeeds  in  making  them  look  greater  fools 
than  they  are.  This  clumsiness  clings  even  to 
the  photographs  of  public  men,  as  they  are 
snapshotted  at  public  meetings.  A  sensitive 
politician  (if  there  is  such  a  thing)  would,  I 
should  think,  want  to  murder  the  man  who 
snapshots  him  at  those  moments.  For  our  gen- 
eral impression  of  a  man's  gesture  or  play  of 
feature  is  made  up  of  a  series  of  vanishing  in- 
stants, at  any  one  of  which  he  may  look  worse 
than  our  general  impression  records.  Mr.  Au- 
gustine Birrell  may  have  made  quite  a  sensible 

115 


116  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

and  amusing  speech,  in  the  course  of  which  his 
audience  would  hardly  have  noticed  that  he 
resettled  his  necktie.  Snapshot  him,  and  he 
appears  as  convulsively  clutching  his  throat  in 
the  agonies  of  strangulation,  and  with  his  head 
twisted  on  one  side  as  if  he  had  been  hanged. 
Sir  Edward  Carson  might  make  a  perfectly 
good  speech,  which  no  one  thought  wearisome, 
but  might  himself  be  just  tired  enough  to  shift 
from  one  leg  to  the  other.  Snapshot  him,  and 
he  appears  as  holding  one  leg  stiffly  in  the  air 
and  yawning  enough  to  swallow  the  audience. 
But  it  is  in  the  prose  narratives  of  the  Press 
that  we  find  most  manifestations  of  this 
strange  ineptitude;  this  knack  of  exhibiting 
your  own  favourites  in  an  unlucky  light.  It  is 
not  so  much  that  the  party  journalists  do  not 
tell  the  truth  as  that  they  tell  just  enough  of  it 
to  make  it  clear  that  they  are  telling  Hes.  One 
of  their  favourite  blunders  is  an  amazing  sort 
of  bathos.     They  begin  by  telling  you  that 


THE  FATIGUE  OF  FLEET  STREET    117 

some  statesman  said  something  brilliant  in 
style  or  biting  in  wit,  at  which  his  hearers 
thrilled  with  terror  or  thundered  with  ap- 
plause. And  then  they  tell  you  what  it  was 
that  he  said.    Silly  asses ! 


Insane  Exaggeration 

Here  is  an  example  from  a  leading  Liberal 
paper  touching  the  debates  on  Home  Rule.  I 
am  a  Home  Ruler;  so  my  sympathies  would 
be,  if  anything,  on  the  side  of  the  Liberal  paper 
upon  that  point.  I  merely  quote  it  as  an  ex- 
ample of  this  ridiculous  way  of  writing,  which, 
by  insane  exaggeration,  actually  makes  its 
hero  look  smaller  than  he  is. 

This  was  strange  languge  to  use  about  the 
"hypocritical  sham,"  and  Mr.  Asquith,  know- 
ing that  the  biggest  battle  of  his  career  was 
upon  him,  hit  back  without  mercy.  "I  should 
like  first  to  know,"  said  he,  with  a  glance  at  his 


118  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

supporters,  "whether  my  proposals  are  ac- 
cepted?" 

That's  all.  And  I  really  do  riot  see  why 
poor  Mr.  Asquith  should  be  represented  as 
having  violated  the  Christian  virtue  of  mercy 
by  saying  that.  I  myself  could  compose  a 
great  many  paragraphs  upon  the  same  model, 
each  containing  its  stinging  and  perhaps  un- 
scrupulous epigram.    As,  for  example: — 

"The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  realising 
that  his  choice  now  lay  between  denying  God 
and  earning  the  crown  of  martyrdom  by  dying 
in  torments,  spoke  with  a  frenzy  of  religious 
passion  that  might  have  seemed  fanatical  under 
circumstances  less  intense.  'The  Children's 
Service,'  he  said  firmly,  with  his  face  to  the  con- 
gregation, 'will  be  held  at  half-past  four  this 
afternoon  as  usual.' " 

Or,  we  might  have: — 

"Lord  Roberts,  recognising  that  he  had  now 
to  face  Armageddon,  and  that  if  he  lost  this 


THE  FATIGUE  OF  FLEET  STREET    119 

last  battle  against  overwhelming  odds  the  inde- 
pendence of  England  would  be  extinguished 
forever,  addressed  to  his  soldiers  (looking  at 
them  and  not  falling  off  his  horse)  a  speech 
which  brought  their  national  passions  to  boil- 
ing point,  and  might  well  have  seemed  blood- 
thirsty in  quieter  times.  It  ended  with  the  cele- 
brated declaration  that  it  was  a  fine  day." 

Or  we  might  have  the  much  greater  excite- 
ment of  reading  something  like  this : — 

*'The  Astronomer  Royal,  having  realised 
that  the  earth  would  certainly  be  smashed  to 
pieces  by  a  comet  unless  his  requests  in  con- 
■  nection  with  wireless  telegraphy  were  seriously 
considered,  gave  an  address  at  the  Royal  So- 
ciety which,  under  other  circumstances,  would 
have  seemed  unduly  dogmatic  and  emotional 
and  deficient  in  scientific  agnosticism.  This 
address  (which  he  delivered  without  any  at- 
tempt to  stand  on  his  head)  included  a  fierce 
and  even  ferocious  declaration  that  it  is  gen- 


120  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

erally  easier  to  see  the  stars  by  night  than  by 
day." 

Now,  I  cannot  see,  on  my  conscience  and 
reason,  that  any  one  of  my  imaginary  para- 
graphs is  more  ridiculous  than  the  real  one. 
Nobody  can  believe  that  Mr.  Asquith  regards 
these  belated  and  careful  compromises  about 
Home  Rule  as  "the  biggest  battle  of  his  ca- 
reer." It  is  only  justice  to  him  to  say  that  he 
has  had  bigger  battles  than  that.  Nobody  can 
believe  that  any  body  of  men,  bodily  present, 
either  thundered  or  thrilled  at  a  man  merely 
saying  that  he  would  like  to  know  whether  his 
proposals  were  accepted.  No ;  it  would  be  far 
better  for  Parliament  if  its  doors  were  shut 
again,  and  reporters  were  excluded.  In  that 
case,  the  outer  public  did  hear  genuine  ru- 
mours of  almost  gigantic  eloquence;  such  as 
that  which  has  perpetuated  Pitt's  reply 
against  the  charge  of  youth,  or  Fox's  bludg- 
eoning of  the  idea  of  war  as  a  compromise.    It 


THE  FATIGUE  OF  FLEET  STREET    121 

would  be  much  better  to  follow  the  old  fashion 
and  let  in  no  reporters  at  all  than  to  follow 
the  new  fashion  and  select  the  stupidest  re- 
porters you  can  find. 

Their  Load  of  Lies 

Now,  why  do  people  in  Fleet-street  talk  such 
tosh?  People  in  Fleet-street  are  not  fools. 
Most  of  them  have  realised  reality  through 
work;  some  through  starvation;  some  through 
damnation,  or  something  damnably  like  it.  I 
think  it  is  simply  and  seriously  true  that  they 
are  tired  of  their  job.  As  the  general  said  in 
M.  Rostand's  play,  "la  fatigue!" 

I  do  really  believe  that  this  is  one  of  the  ways 
in  which  God  (don't  get  flurried.  Nature  if 
you  like)  is  unexpectedly  avenged  on  things 
infamous  and  unreasonable.  And  this  method 
is  that  men's  moral  and  even  physical  tenacity 
actually  give  out  under  such  a  load  of  lies. 
They  go  on  writing  their  leading  articles  and 


122  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

their  Parliamentary  reports.  They  go  on  do- 
ing it  as  a  convict  goes  on  picking  oakum.  But 
the  point  is  not  that  we  are  bored  with  their 
articles ;  the  point  is  that  they  are.  The  work 
is  done  worse  because  it  is  done  weakly  and 
without  human  enthusiasm.  And  it  is  done 
weakly  because  of  the  truth  we  have  told  so 
many  times  in  this  book:  that  it  is  not  done 
for  monarchy,  for  which  men  will  die;  or  for 
democracy,  for  which  men  will  die;  or  even 
for  aristocracy,  for  which  many  men  have  died. 
It  is  done  for  a  thing  called  Capitalism:  which 
stands  out  quite  clearly  in  history  in  many 
curious  ways.  But  the  most  curious  thing 
about  it  is  that  no  man  has  loved  it;  and  no 
man  died  for  it. 


THE  AMNESTY  FOR  AGGRESSION 

If  there  is  to  rise  out  of  all  this  red  ruin 
something  like  a  republic  of  justice,  it  is  essen- 
tial that  our  views  should  be  real  views ;  that  is, 
glimpses  of  lives  and  landscapes  outside  our- 
selves. It  is  essential  that  they  should  not  be 
m,ere  opium  visions  that  begin  and  end  in 
smoke — and  so  often  in  cannon  smoke.  I 
make  no  apology,  therefore,  for  returning  to 
the  purely  practical  and  realistic  point  I  urged 
last  week:  the  fact  that  we  shall  lose  every- 
thing we  might  have  gained  if  we  lose  the  idea 
that  the  responsible  person  is  responsible. 

For  instance,  it  is  almost  specially  so  with 
the  one  or  two  things  in  which  the  British  Gov- 
ernment, or  the  British  public,  really  are  behav- 
ing badly.    The  first,  and  worst  of  them,  is  the 

123 


124  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

non-extension  of  the  Moratorium,  or  truce  of 
debtor  and  creditor,  to  the  very  world  where 
there  are  the  poorest  debtors  and  the  cruellest 
creditors.  This  is  infamous:  and  should  be,  if 
possible,  more  infamous  to  those  who  think  the 
war  right  than  to  those  who  think  it  wrong. 
Everyone  knows  that  the  people  who  can  least 
pay  their  debts  are  the  people  who  are  always 
trying  to.  Among  the  poor  a  payment  may  be 
as  rash  as  a  speculation.  Among  the  rich  a 
bankruptcy  may  be  as  safe  as  a  bank.  Consid- 
ering the  class  from  which  private  soldiers  are 
taken,  there  is  an  atrocious  meanness  in  the 
idea  of  buying  their  blood  abroad,  while  we  sell 
their  sticks  at  home.  The  English  language, 
by  the  way,  is  full  of  delicate  paradoxes.  We 
talk  of  the  private  soldiers  because  they  are 
really  public  soldiers ;  and  we  talk  of  the  public 
schools  because  they  are  really  private  schools. 
Anyhow,  the  wrong  is  of  the  sort  that  ought 
to  be  resisted,  as  much  in  war  as  in  peace. 


THE  AMNESTY  FOR  AGGRESSION    125 

Ought  to  Be  Hammered 

But  as  long  as  we  speak  of  it  as  a  cloudy 
conclusion,  come  to  by  an  anonymous  club 
called  Parliament,  or  a  masked  tribunal  called 
the  Cabinet,  we  shall  never  get  such  a  wrong 
righted.  Somebody  is  officially  responsible  for 
the  unfairness ;  and  that  somebody  ought  to  be 
hammered.  The  other  example,  less  impor- 
tant but  more  ludicrous,  is  the  silly  boycott  of 
Germans  in  England,  extending  even  to  Ger- 
man music.  I  do  not  believe  for  a  moment  that 
the  English  people  feel  any  such  insane  fastidi- 
ousness. Are  the  English  artists  who  practise 
the  particularly  English  art  of  water-colour 
to  be  forbidden  to  use  Prussian  blue  ?  Are  all 
old  ladies  to  shoot  their  Pomeranian  dogs  ?  But 
though  England  would  laugh  at  this,  she  will 
get  the  credit  of  it,  and  will  continue :  until  we 
ask  who  the  actual  persons  are  who  feel  sure 
that  we  should  shudder  at  a  ballad  of  the 


126  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Rhine.  It  is  certain  that  we  should  find  they 
are  capitalists.  It  is  very  probable  that  we 
should  find  they  are  foreigners. 

Some  days  ago  the  Official  Council  of  the 
Independent  Labour  Party,  or  the  Independ- 
ent Council  of  the  Official  Labour  Party,  or 
the  Independent  and  Official  Council  of  the 
Labour  Party  ( I  have  got  quite  nervous  about 
these  names  and  distinctions ;  but  they  all  seem 
to  say  the  same  thing)  began  their  manifesto 
by  saying  it  would  be  difficult  to  assign  the  de- 
grees of  responsibility  which  each  nation  had 
for  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  Afterwards,  a 
writer  in  the  "Christian  Commonwealth,"  la- 
menting war  in  the  name  of  Labour,  but  in  the 
language  of  my  own  romantic  middle-class, 
said  that  all  the  nations  must  share  the  respon- 
sibility for  this  great  calamity  of  war.  Now 
exactly  as  long  as  we  go  on  talking  like  that  we 
shall  have  war  after  war,  and  calamity  after 
calamity,  until  the  crack  of  doom.    It  simply 


THE  AMNESTY  FOR  AGGRESSION    127 

amounts  to  a  promise  of  pardon  to  any  person 
who  will  start  a  quarrel.  It  is  an  amnesty  for 
assassins.  The  moment  any  man  assaults  any 
other  man  he  makes  all  the  other  men  as  bad  as 
himself.  He  has  only  to  stab,  and  to  vanish  in 
a  fog  of  forgetfulness.  The  real  eagles  of 
iron,  the  predatory  Empires,  will  be  delighted 
with  this  doctrine.  They  will  applaud  the  La- 
bour Concert  or  Committee,  or  whatever  it  is 
called.  They  will  willingly  take  all  the  crime, 
with  only  a  quarter  of  the  conscience :  they  will 
be  as  ready  to  share  the  memory  as  they  are  to 
share  the  spoil.  The  Powers  will  divide  re- 
sponsibility as  calmly  as  they  divided  Poland. 

The  Whole  Loathsome  Load 

But  I  still  stubbornly  and  meekly  submit 
my  point:  that  you  cannot  end  war  without 
asking  who  began  it.  If  you  think  somebody 
else,  not  Germany,  began  it,  then  blame  that 
somebody  else:  do  not  blame  everybody  and 


128  UTOPIA  OF  USUREES 

nobody.  Perhaps  you  think  that  a  small  sov- 
ereign people,  fresh  from  two  triumphant 
wars,  ought  to  discrown  itself  before  sunrise; 
because  the  nephew  of  a  neighbouring  Em- 
peror has  been  shot  by  his  own  subjects.  Very 
well.  Then  blame  Servia;  and,  to  the  extent 
of  your  influence,  you  may  be  preventing  small 
kingdoms  being  obstinate  or  even  princes  be- 
ing shot.  Perhaps  you  think  the  whole  thing 
was  a  huge  conspiracy  of  Russia,  with  France 
as  a  dupe  and  Servia  as  a  pretext.  Very  well. 
Then  blame  Russia ;  and,  to  the  extent  of  your 
influence,  you  may  be  preventing  great  Em- 
pires from  making  racial  excuses  for  a  raid. 
Perhaps  you  think  France  wrong  for  feeling 
what  you  call  "revenge,"  and  I  should  call  re- 
covery of  stolen  goods.  Perhaps  you  blame 
Belgium  for  being  sentimental  about  her  fron- 
tier; or  England  for  being  sentimental  about 
her  word.  If  so,  blame  them ;  or  whichever  of 
them  you  think  is  to  blame.     Or  again,  it  is 


THE  AMNESTY  FOR  AGGRESSION    129 

barely  possible  that  you  may  think,  as  I  do, 
that  the  whole  loathsome  load  has  been  laid 
upon  us  by  the  monarchy  which  I  have  not 
named ;  still  less  wasted  time  in  abusing.  But 
if  there  be  in  Europe  a  military  State  which 
has  not  the  religion  of  Russia,  yet  has  helped 
Russia  to  tyrannise  over  the  Poles,  that  State 
cares  not  for  religion,  but  for  tyranny.  If 
there  be  a  State  in  Europe  which  has  not  the 
religion  of  the  Austrians,  but  has  helped  Aus- 
tria to  bully  the  Servians,  that  State  cares  not 
for  belief,  but  for  bullying.  If  there  be  in 
Europe  any  people  or  principality  which  re- 
spects neither  republics  nor  religions,  to  which 
the  political  ideal  of  Paris  is  as  much  a  myth  as 
the  mystical  ideal  of  Moscow,  then  blame  that : 
and  do  more  than  blame.  In  the  healthy  and 
highly  theological  words  of  Robert  Blatchford, 
drive  it  back  to  the  Hell  from  which  it  came. 


130  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Crying  Over  Spilt  Blood 

But  whatever  you  do,  do  not  blame  every- 
body for  what  was  certainly  done  by  some- 
body. It  may  be  it  is  no  good  crying  over  spilt 
blood,  any  more  than  over  spilt  milk.  But  we 
do  not  find  the  culprit  any  more  by  spilling  the 
milk  over  everybody ;  or  by  daubing  everybody 
with  blood.  Still  less  do  we  improve  matters 
by  watering  the  milk  with  our  tears,  nor  the 
blood  either.  To  say  that  everybody  is  respon- 
sible means  that  nobody  is  responsible.  If  in 
the  future  we  see  Russia  annexing  Rutland  (as 
part  of  the  old  Kingdom  of  Muscovy) ,  if  we 
see  Bavaria  taking  a  sudden  fancy  to  the  Bank 
of  England,  or  the  King  of  the  Cannibal 
Islands  suddenly  demanding  a  tribute  of  edi- 
ble boys  and  girls  from  England  and  America, 
we  may  be  quite  certain  also  that  the  Leader 
of  the  Labour  Party  will  rise,  with  a  slight 


THE  AMNESTY  FOR  AGGRESSION    131 

cough,  and  say:  "It  would  be  a  difficult  task 
to  apportion  the  blame  between  the  various 
claims  which " 


REVIVE  THE  COURT  JESTER 

I  HOPE  the  Government  will  not  think  just 
now  about  appointing  a  Poet  Laureate.  I 
hardly  think  they  can  be  altogether  in  the  right 
mood.  The  business  just  now  before  the  coun- 
try makes  a  very  good  detective  story;  but  as 
a  national  epic  it  is  a  little  depressing.  Jingo 
literature  always  weakens  a  nation;  but  even 
healthy  patriotic  literature  has  its  proper  time 
and  occasion.  For  instance,  Mr.  Newbolt 
(who  has  been  suggested  for  the  post)  is  a  very 
fine  poet ;  but  I  think  his  patriotic  lyrics  would 
just  now  rather  jar  upon  a  patriot.  We  are 
rather  too  much  concerned  about  our  practical 
seamanship  to  feel  quite  confident  that  Drake 
will  return  and  *'drum  them  up  the  Channel  as 
he  drummed  them  long  ago."     On  the  con- 

132 


REVIVE  THE  COUET  JESTER    133 

trary,  we  have  an  uncomfortable  feeling  that 
Drake's  ship  might  suddenly  go  to  the  bottom, 
because  the  capitalists  have  made  Lloyd 
George  abolish  the  PlimsoU  Line.  One  could 
not,  without  being  understood  ironically,  ad- 
jure the  two  party  teams  to-day  to  "play  up, 
play  up  and  play  the  game,"  or  to  "love  the 
game  more  than  the  prize."  And  there  is  no 
national  hero  at  this  moment  in  the  soldiering 
line — unless,  perhaps,  it  is  Major  Archer-Shee 
— of  whom  anyone  would  be  likely  to  say: 
"Sed  miles;  sed  pro  patria."  There  is,  indeed, 
one  beautiful  poem  of  Mr.  Newbolt's  which 
may  mingle  faintly  with  one's  thoughts  in  such 
times,  but  that,  alas,  is  to  a  very  different  tune. 
I  mean  that  one  in  which  he  echoes  Turner's 
conception  of  the  old  wooden  ship  vanishing 
with  all  the  valiant  memories  of  the  English: 


134  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

There's  a  far  bell  ringing 

At  the  setting  of  the  sun. 

And  a  phantom  voice  is  singing 

Of  the  great  days  done. 

There's  a  far  bell  ringing, 

And  a  phantom  voice  is  singing 

Of  a  fame  forever  clinging 

To  the  great  days  done. 

For  the  sunset  breezes  shiver, 

Temeraire,  Temeraire, 

And  she's  fading  down  the  river.  .  .  . 

Well,  well,  neither  you  nor  I  know  whether 
she  is  fading  down  the  river  or  not.  It  is 
quite  enough  for  us  to  know,  as  King  Alfred 
did,  that  a  great  many  pirates  have  landed  on 
both  banks  of  the  Thames. 

Praise  and  Prophecy  Impossible 

At  this  moment  that  is  the  only  kind  of  pa- 
triotic poem  that  could  satisfy  the  emotions  of 
a  patriotic  person.  But  it  certainly  is  not  the 
sort  of  poem  that  is  expected  from  a  Poet 


EEVIVE  THE  COURT  JESTEE    135 

Laureate,  either  on  the  highest  or  the  lowest 
theory  of  his  office.  He  is  either  a  great  min- 
strel singing  the  victories  of  a  great  king,  or 
he  is  a  common  Court  official  like  the  Groom 
of  the  Powder  Closet.  In  the  first  case  his 
praises  should  he  true ;  in  the  second  case  they 
will  nearly  always  be  false;  hut  in  either  case 
he  must  praise.  And  what  there  is  for  him  to 
praise  just  now  it  would  be  precious  hard  to 
say.  And  if  there  is  no  great  hope  of  a  real 
poet,  there  is  still  less  hope  of  a  real  prophet. 
What  Newman  called,  I  think,  "The  Propheti- 
cal Office,"  that  is,  the  institution  of  an  inspired 
protest  even  against  an  inspired  religion,  cer- 
tainly would  not  do  in  modern  England.  The 
Court  is  not  likely  to  keep  a  tame  prophet  in 
order  to  encourage  him  to  be  wild.  It  is  not 
likely  to  pay  a  man  to  say  that  wolves  shall 
howl  in  Downing-street  and  vultures  build 
their  nests  in  Buckingham  Palace.  So  vast 
has  been  the  progress  of  humanity  that  these 


136  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

two  things  are  quite  impossible.  We  cannot 
have  a  great  poet  praising  kings.  We  cannot 
have  a  great  prophet  denouncing  kings.  So 
I  have  to  fall  back  on  a  third  suggestion. 

The  Field  for  a  Fool 

Instead  of  reviving  the  Court  Poet,  why  not 
revive  the  Court  Fool?  He  is  the  only  person 
who  could  do  any  good  at  this  moment  either 
to  the  Royal  or  the  judicial  Courts.  The  pres- 
ent political  situation  is  utterly  unsuitable  for 
the  purposes  of  a  great  poet.  But  it  is  par- 
ticularly suitable  for  the  purposes  of  a  great 
buffoon.  The  old  jester  was  under  certain 
privileges:  you  could  not  resent  the  jokes  of  a 
fool,  just  as  you  cannot  resent  the  sermons  of 
a  curate.  Now,  what  the  present  Government 
of  England  wants  is  neither  serious  praise  nor 
serious  denunciation;  what  it  wants  is  satire. 
What  it  wants,  in  other  words,  is  realism  given 
with  gusto.    When  King  Louis  the  Eleventh 


REVIVE  THE  COURT  JESTER    137 

unexpectedly  visited  his  enemy,  the  Duke  of 
Burgundy,  with  a  small  escort,  the  Duke's 
jester  said  he  would  give  the  King  his  fool's 
cap,  for  he  was  the  fool  now.  And  when  the 
Duke  replied  with  dignity,  "And  suppose  I 
treat  him  with  all  proper  respect?"  the  fool 
answered,  "Then  I  will  give  it  to  you."  That 
is  the  kind  of  thing  that  somebody  ought  to  be 
free  to  say  now.  But  if  you  say  it  now  you 
will  be  fined  a  hundred  pounds  at  the  least. 

Carson's  Dilemma 

For  the  things  that  have  been  happening 
lately  are  not  merely  things  that  one  could 
joke  about.  They  are  themselves,  truly  and 
intrinsically,  jokes.  I  mean  that  there  is  a  sort 
of  epigram  of  unreason  in  the  situation  itself, 
as  there  was  in  the  situation  where  there  was 
jam  yesterday  and  jam  to-morrow  but  never 
jam  to-day.  Take,  for  instance,  the  extraordi- 
nary case  of  Sir  Edward  Carson.    The  point  is 


138  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

not  whether  we  regard  his  attitude  in  Belfast 
as  the  defiance  of  a  sincere  and  dogmatic  rebel, 
or  as  the  bluff  of  a  party  hack  and  mounte- 
bank.   The  point  is  not  whether  we  regard  his 
defence  of  the  Government  at  the  Old  Bailey 
as  a  chivalrous  and  reluctant  duty  done  as  an 
advocate  or  a  friend,  or  as  a  mere  case  of  a 
lawyer  selling  his  soul  for  a  fat  brief.     The 
point  is  that  whichever  of  the  two  actions  we 
approve,  and  whichever  of  the  four  explana- 
tions we  adopt,  Sir  Edward's  position  is  still 
raving  nonsense.     On  any  argimient,  he  can- 
not escape  from  his  dilemma.    It  may  be  ar- 
gued that  laws  and  customs  should  be  obeyed 
whatever  our  private  feelings;  and  that  it  is 
an  established  custom  to  accept  a  brief  in  such 
a  case.    But  then  it  is  a  somewhat  more  estab- 
lished custom  to  obey  an  Act  of  Parliament 
and  to  keep  the  peace.    It  may  be  argued  that 
extreme  misgovernment  justifies  men  in  Ul- 
ster or  elsewhere  in  refusing  to  obey  the  law. 


KEVIVE  THE  COURT  JESTER    139 

But  then  it  would  justify  them  even  more  in 
refusing  to  appear  professionally  in  a  law 
court.  Etiquette  cannot  be  at  once  so  unim- 
portant that  Carson  may  shoot  at  the  King's 
uniform,  and  yet  so  important  that  he  must 
always  be  ready  to  put  on  his  own.  The  Gov- 
ernment cannot  be  so  disreputable  that  Carson 
need  not  lay  down  his  gun,  and  yet  so  respect- 
able that  he  is  bound  to  put  on  his  wig.  Car- 
son cannot  at  once  be  so  fierce  that  he  can  kill 
in  what  he  considers  a  good  cause,  and  yet  so 
meek  that  he  must  argue  in  what  he  considers  a 
bad  cause.  Obedience  or  disobedience,  conven- 
tional or  unconventional,  a  solicitor's  letter  can- 
not be  more  sacred  than  the  King's  writ ;  a  blue 
bag  cannot  be  more  rational  than  the  British 
flag.  The  thing  is  rubbish  read  anyway,  and 
the  only  difficulty  is  to  get  a  joke  good  enough 
to  express  it.  It  is  a  case  for  the  Court  Jester. 
The  phantasy  of  it  could  only  be  expressed  by 
some  huge  ceremonial  hoax.    Carson  ought  to 


140  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

be  crowned  with  the  shamrocks  and  emeralds 
and  followed  by  green-clad  minstrels  of  the 
Clan-na-Gael,  playing  "The  Wearing  of  the 
Green." 

Belated  Chattiness  by  Wireless 

But  all  the  recent  events  are  like  that.  They 
are  practical  jokes.  The  jokes  do  not  need  to 
be  made:  they  only  need  to  be  pointed  out. 
You  and  I  do  not  talk  and  act  as  the  Isaacs 
brothers  talked  and  acted,  by  their  own  most 
favourable  account  of  themselves;  and  even 
their  account  of  themselves  was  by  no  means 
favourable.  You  and  I  do  not  talk  of  meeting 
our  own  born  brother  "at  a  family  function"  as 
if  he  were  some  infinitely  distant  cousin  whom 
we  only  met  at  Christmas.  You  and  I,  when 
we  suddenly  feel  inclined  for  a  chat  with  the 
same  brother  about  his  dinner  and  the  Coal 
Strike,  do  not  generally  select  either  wireless 
telegraphy  or  the  Atlantic  Cable  as  the  most 


EEVIVE  THE  COURT  JESTER    141 

obvious  and  economical  channel  for  that  out- 
burst of  belated  chattiness.  You  and  I  do  not 
talk,  if  it  is  proposed  to  start  a  railway  be- 
tween Catsville  and  Dogtown,  as  if  the  put- 
ting up  of  a  station  at  Dogtown  could  have 
no  kind  of  economic  effect  on  the  putting  up 
of  a  station  at  Catsville.  You  and  I  do  not 
think  it  candid  to  say  that  when  we  are  at  one 
end  of  a  telephone  we  have  no  sort  of  connec- 
tion with  the  other  end.  These  things  have  got 
into  the  region  of  farce;  and  should  be  dealt 
with  farcically,  not  even  ferociously. 

A  Fool  Who  Shall  Be  Free 

In  the  Roman  Republic  there  was  a  Tribune 
of  the  People,  whose  person  was  inviolable  like 
an  ambassador's.  There  was  much  the  same 
idea  in  Becket's  attempt  to  remove  the  Priest, 
who  was  then  the  popular  champion,  from  the 
ordinary  courts.  We  shall  have  no  Tribune; 
for  we  have  no  republic.    We  shall  have  no 


142  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Priest;  for  we  have  no  religion.  The  best  we 
deserve  or  can  expect  is  a  Fool  who  shall  be 
free;  and  who  shall  deliver  us  with  laughter. 


THE  ART  OF  MISSING  THE  POINT 

Missing  the  point  is  a  very  fine  art;  and  has 
been  carried  to  something  hke  perfection  by 
pohticians  and  Pressmen  to-day.  For  the 
point  is  generally  a  very  sharp  point;  and  is, 
moreover,  sharp  at  both  ends.  That  is  to  say 
that  both  parties  would  probably  impale  them- 
selves in  an  uncomfortable  manner  if  they  did 
not  manage  to  avoid  it  altogether.  I  have  just 
been  looking  at  the  election  address  of  the  offi- 
cial Liberal  candidate  for  the  part  of  the  coun- 
try in  which  I  live;  and  though  it  is,  if  any- 
thing, rather  more  logical  and  free  from  cant 
than  most  other  documents  of  the  sort  it  is  an 
excellent  example  of  missing  the  point.  The 
candidate  has  to  go  boring  on  about  Free 

143 


144  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Trade  and  Land  Reform  and  Education;  and 
nobody  reading  it  could  possibly  imagine  that 
in  the  town  of  Wycombe,  where  the  poll  will 
be  declared,  the  capital  of  the  Wycombe  divi- 
sion of  Bucks  which  the  candidate  is  contest- 
ing, centre  of  the  important  and  vital  trade  on 
which  it  has  thriven,  a  savage  struggle  about 
justice  has  been  raging  for  months  past  be- 
tween the  poor  and  rich,  as  real  as  the  French 
Revolution.  The  man  offering  himself  at  Wy- 
combe as  representative  of  the  Wycombe  divi- 
sion simply  says  nothing  about  it  at  all.  It  is 
as  if  a  man  at  the  crisis  of  the  French  Terror 
had  offered  himself  as  a  deputy  for  the  town 
of  Paris,  and  had  said  nothing  about  the  Mon- 
archy, nothing  about  the  Republic,  nothing 
about  the  massacres,  nothing  about  the  war; 
but  had  explained  with  great  clearness  his 
views  on  the  suppression  of  the  Jansenists,  the 
literary  style  of  Racine,  the  suitability  of  Tu- 
renae  for  the  post  of  commander-in-chief,  and 


THE  ART  OF  MISSING  THE  POINT    145 

the  religious  reflections  of  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon.  For,  at  their  best,  the  candidate's  top- 
ics are  not  topical.  Home  Rule  is  a  very  good 
thing,  and  modem  education  is  a  very  bad 
thing ;  but  neither  of  them  are  things  that  any- 
body is  talking  about  in  High  Wycombe.  This 
is  the  first  and  simplest  way  of  missing  the 
point:  deliberately  to  avoid  and  ignore  it. 

The  Candid  Candidate 

It  would  be  an  amusing  experiment,  by  the 
way,  to  go  to  the  point  instead  of  avoiding  it. 
What  fun  it  would  be  to  stand  as  a  strict  Party 
candidate,  but  issue  a  perfectly  frank  and  cyni- 
cal Election  Address.  Mr.  Mosley's  address 
begins,  "Gentlemen, — Sir  Alfred  Cripps  hav- 
ing been  chosen  for  a  high  judicial  position  and 
a  seat  in  the  House  of  Lords,  a  by-election 
now  becomes  necessary,  and  the  electors  of 
South  Bucks  are  charged  with  the  responsible 
duty  of  electing,  etc.,  etc."    But  suppose  there 


146  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

were  another  candidate  whose  election  address 
opened  in  a  plain,  manly  style,  like  this;  "Gen- 
tlemen,— In  the  sincere  hope  of  being  myself 
chosen  for  a  high  judicial  position  or  a  seat  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  or  considerably  increasing 
my  private  fortune  by  some  Government  ap- 
pointment, or,  at  least,  inside  information 
about  the  financial  prospects,  I  have  decided 
that  it  is  worth  my  wliile  to  disburse  large  sums 
of  money  to  you  on  various  pretexts,  and,  with 
even  more  reluctance  to  endure  the  bad  speak- 
ing and  bad  ventilation  of  the  Commons' 
House  of  Parliament,  so  help  me  God.  I  have 
very  pronounced  convictions  on  various  politi- 
cal questions ;  but  I  will  not  trouble  my  fellow- 
citizens  with  them,  since  I  have  quite  made  up 
my  mind  to  abandon  any  or  all  of  them  if  re- 
quested to  do  so  by  the  upper  classes.  The 
electors  are  therefore  charged  with  the  entirely 
irresponsible  duty  of  electing  a  Member ;  or,  in 
other  words,  I  ask  my  neighbours  round  about 


THE  ART  OF  MISSING  THE  POINT    147 

this  part,  who  know  I  am  not  a  bad  chap  in 
many  ways,  to  do  me  a  good  turn  in  my  busi- 
ness, just  as  I  might  ask  them  to  change  a 
sovereign.  My  election  will  have  no  conceiv- 
able kind  of  effect  on  anything  or  anybody  ex- 
cept myself ;  so  I  ask,  as  man  to  man,  the  Elec- 
tors of  the  Southern  or  Wycombe  Division  of 
the  County  of  Buckingham  to  accept  a  ride  in 
one  of  my  motor-cars ;  and  poll  early  to  please 
a  pal — God  Save  the  King."  I  do  not  know 
whether  you  or  I  would  be  elected  if  we  pre- 
sented ourselves  with  an  election  address  of 
that  kind ;  but  we  should  have  had  our  fun  and 
(comparatively  speaking)  saved  our  souls;  and 
I  have  a  strong  suspicion  that  we  should  be 
elected  or  rejected  on  a  mechanical  majority 
like  anybody  else;  nobody  having  dreamed  of 
reading  an  election  address  any  more  than  em 
advertisement  of  a  hair  restorer. 


148  UTOPIA  OF  USUREES 

Tyranny  and  Head-Dress 

But  there  is  another  and  more  subtle  way  in 
which  we  may  miss  the  point ;  and  that  is,  not 
by  keeping  a  dead  silence  about  it,  but  by  be- 
ing just  witty  enough  to  state  it  wrong.  Thus, 
some  of  the  Liberal  official  papers  have  almost 
screwed  up  their  courage  to  the  sticking-point 
about  the  bestial  coup  d'etat  in  South  Africa. 
They  have  screwed  up  their  courage  to  the 
sticking-point ;  and  it  has  stuck.  It  cannot  get 
any  further;  because  it  has  missed  the  main 
point.  The  modern  Liberals  make  their  fee- 
ble attempts  to  attack  the  introduction  of  slav- 
ery into  South  Africa  by  the  Dutch  and  the 
Jews,  by  a  very  typical  evasion  of  the  vital 
fact.  The  vital  fact  is  simply  slavery.  Most 
of  these  Dutchmen  have  always  felt  like  slave- 
owners. Most  of  these  Jews  have  always  felt 
like  slaves.  Now  that  they  are  on  top,  they 
have  a  particular  and  curious  kind  of  impu- 


THE  ART  OF  MISSING  THE  POINT    149 

dence,  which  is  only  known  among  slaves.  But 
the  Liberal  journalists  will  do  their  best  to 
suggest  that  the  South  African  wrong  con- 
sisted in  what  they  call  Martial  Law.  That  is, 
that  there  is  something  specially  wicked  about 
men  doing  an  act  of  cruelty  in  khaki  or  in  ver- 
milion, but  not  if  it  is  done  in  dark  blue  with 
pewter  buttons.  The  tyrant  who  wears  a 
busb^or  a  forage  cap  is  abominable;  the  tyrant 
who  wears  a  horsehair  wig  is  excusable.  To 
be  judged  by  soldiers  is  hell;  but  to  be  judged 
by  lawyers  is  paradise. 

Now  the  point  must  not  be  missed  in  this 
way.  Wliat  is  wrong  with  the  tyranny  in 
Africa  is  not  that  it  is  run  by  soldiers.  It 
would  be  quite  as  bad,  or  worse,  if  it  were  run 
by  policemen.  What  is  wrong  is  that,  for  the 
first  time  since  Pagan  times,  private  men  are 
being  forced  to  work  for  a  private  man.  Men 
are  being  punished  by  imprisonment  or  exile 
for  refusing  to  accept  a  job.     The  fact  that 


150  UTOPIA  OF  USUREES 

Botha  can  ride  on  a  horse,  or  fire  off  a  gun, 
makes  him  better  rather  than  worse  than  any 
man  like  Sidney  Webb  or  Philip  Snowden, 
who  attempt  the  same  slavery  by  much  less 
manly  methods.  The  Liberal  Party  will  try  to 
divert  the  whole  discussion  to  one  about  what 
they  call  militarism.  But  the  very  terms  of 
modern  politics  contradict  it.  For  when  we 
talk  of  real  rebels  against  the  present  system 
we  call  them  Militants.  And  there  will  be 
none  in  the  Servile  State. 


THE  SERVILE  STATE  AGAIN 

I  READ  the  other  day,  in  a  quotation  from  a 
German  newspaper,  the  highly  characteristic 
remark  that  Germany  having  annexed  Bel- 
gimn  would  soon  re-establish  its  commerce  and 
prosperity,  and  that,  in  particular,  arrange- 
ments were  already  being  made  for  introduc- 
ing into  the  new  province  the  German  laws 
for  the  protection  of  workmen. 

I  am  quite  content  with  that  paragraph  for 
the  purpose  of  any  controversy  about  what  is 
called  German  atrocity.  If  men  I  know  had 
not  told  me  they  had  themselves  seen  the  bay- 
oneting of  a  baby ;  if  the  most  respectable  ref- 
ugees did  not  bring  with  them  stories  of  burn- 
ing cottages — yes,  and  of  burning  cottagers  as 
well;  if  doctors  did  not  report  what  they  do 

151 


152  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

report  of  the  condition  of  girls  in  the  hospitals ; 
if  there  were  no  facts ;  if  there  were  no  photo- 
graphs, that  one  phrase  I  have  quoted  would 
be  quite  sufficient  to  satisfy  me  that  the  Prus- 
sians are  tyrants ;  tyrants  in  a  peculiar  and  al- 
most insane  sense  which  makes  them  pre-emi- 
nent among  the  evil  princes  of  the  earth.  The 
first  and  most  striking  feature  is  a  stupidity 
that  rises  into  a  sort  of  ghastly  innocence.  The 
protection  of  workmen !  Some  workmen,  per- 
haps, might  have  a  fancy  for  being  protected 
from  shrapnel;  some  might  be  glad  to  put  up 
an  umbrella  that  would  ward  off  things  drop- 
ping from  the  gentle  Zeppelin  in  heaven  upon 
the  place  beneath.  Some  of  these  discontented 
proletarians  have  taken  the  same  view  as  Van- 
dervelde  their  leader,  and  are  now  energeti- 
.  cally  engaged  in  protecting  themselves  along 
the  line  of  the  Yser;  I  am  glad  to  say  not  alto- 
gether without  success.  It  is  probable  that 
nearly  all  of  the  Belgian  workers  would,  on  the 


THE  SERVILE  STATE  AGAIN      153 

whole,  prefer  to  be  protected  against  bombs, 
sabres,  burning  cities,  starvation,  torture,  and 
the  treason  of  wicked  kings.  In  short,  it  is 
probable — it  is  at  least  possible,  impious  as  is 
the  idea — that  they  would  prefer  to  be  pro- 
tected against  Germans  and  all  they  repre- 
sent. But  if  a  Belgian  workman  is  told  that 
he  is  not  to  be  protected  against  Germans,  but 
actually  to  be  protected  by  Germans,  I  think 
he  may  be  excused  for  staring.  His  first  im- 
pulse, I  imagine,  will  be  to  ask,  "Against 
whom?  Are  there  any  worse  people  to  come 
along?" 

But  apart  from  the  hellish  irony  of  this  hu- 
manitarian idea,  the  question  it  raises  is  really 
one  of  solid  importance  for  people  whose  poli- 
tics are  more  or  less  like  ours.  There  is  a  very 
urgent  point  in  that  question,  "Against  whom 
would  the  Belgian  workmen  be  protected  by 
the  German  laws?"  And  if  we  pursue  it,  we 
shall  be  enabled  to  analyse  something  of  that 


154  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

poison — very  largely  a  Prussian  poison — which 
has  long  been  working  in  our  own  common- 
wealth, to  the  enslavement  of  the  weak  and  the 
secret  strengthening  of  the  strong.  For  the 
Prussian  armies  are,  pre-eminently,  the  ad- 
vance guard  of  the  Servile  State.  I  say  this 
scientifically,  and  quite  apart  from  passion  or 
even  from  preference.  I  have  no  illusions 
about  either  Belgium  or  England.  Both  have 
been  stained  with  the  soot  of  Capitalism  and 
blinded  with  the  smoke  of  mere  Colonial  ambi- 
tion; both  have  been  caught  at  a  disadvantage 
in  such  modern  dirt  and  disorder;  both  have 
come  out  much  better  than  I  should  have  ex- 
pected countries  so  modern  and  so  industrial 
to  do.  But  in  England  and  Belgium  there  is 
Capitalism  mixed  up  with  a  great  many  other 
things,  strong  things  and  things  that  pursue 
other  aims ;  Clericalism,  for  instance,  and  mili- 
tant Socialism  in  Belgium;  Trades  Unionism 
and  sport  and  the  remains  of  real  aristocracy  in 


THE  SERVILE  STATE  AGAIN     155 

England.  But  Prussia  is  Capitalism;  that  is, 
a  gradually  solidifying  slavery;  and  that  ma- 
jestic unity  with  which  she  moves,  dragging  all 
the  dumb  Germanics  after  her,  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  her  Servile  State  is  complete,  while 
ours  is  incomplete.  There  are  not  mutinies; 
there  are  not  even  mockeries;  the  voice  of  na- 
tional self-criticism  has  been  extinguished  for- 
ever. For  this  people  is  already  permanently 
cloven  into  a  higher  and  a  lower  class:  in  its 
industry  as  much  as  its  army.  Its  employers 
are,  in  the  strictest  and  most  sinister  sense, 
captains  of  industry.  Its  proletariat  is,  in  the 
truest  and  most  pitiable  sense,  an  army  of  la- 
bour. In  that  atmosphere  masters  bear  upon 
them  the  signs  that  they  are  more  than  men; 
and  to  insult  an  officer  is  death. 

If  anyone  ask  how  this  extreme  and  unmis- 
takable subordination  of  the  employed  to  the 
employers  is  brought  about,  we  all  know  the 
answer.     It  is  brought  about  by  hunger  and 


156  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

hardness  of  heart,  accelerated  by  a  certain 
kind  of  legislation,  of  which  we  have  had  a 
good  deal  lately  in  England,  but  which  was 
almost  invariably  borrowed  from  Prussia.  Mr. 
Herbert  Samuel's  suggestion  that  the  poor 
should  be  able  to  put  their  money  in  little  boxes 
and  not  be  able  to  get  it  out  again  is  a  sort  of 
standing  symbol  of  all  the  rest.  I  have  for- 
gotten how  the  poor  were  going  to  benefit 
eventually  by  what  is  for  them  indistinguish- 
able from  dropping  sixpence  down  a  drain. 
Perhaps  they  were  going  to  get  it  back  some 
day;  perhaps  when  they  could  produce  a  hun- 
dred coupons  out  of  the  Daily  Citizen;  perhaps 
when  they  got  their  hair  cut;  perhaps  when 
they  consented  to  be  inoculated,  or  trepanned, 
or  circumcised,  or  something.  Germany  is  full 
of  this  sort  of  legislation;  and  if  you  asked  an 
innocent  German,  who  honestly  believed  in  it, 
what  it  was,  he  would  answer  that  it  was  for 
the  protection  of  workmen. 


THE  SERVILE  STATE  AGAIN     157 

And  if  you  asked  again  "Their  protection 
from  what?"  you  would  have  the  whole  plan 
and  problem  of  the  Servile  State  plain  in  front 
of  you.  Wliatever  notion  there  is,  there  is  na 
notion  whatever  of  protecting  the  employed 
person  from  his  employer.  Much  less  is  there 
any  idea  of  his  ever  being  anywhere  except 
under  an  employer.  Whatever  the  Capitalist 
wants  he  gets.  He  may  have  the  sense  to 
want  washed  and  well-fed  labourers  rather 
than  dirty  and  feeble  ones,  and  the  restrictions 
may  happen  to  exist  in  the  form  of  laws  from 
the  Kaiser  or  by-laws  from  the  Krupps.  But 
the  Kaiser  will  not  offend  the  Krupps,  and  the 
Krupps  will  not  offend  the  Kaiser.  Laws  of 
this  kind,  then,  do  not  attempt  to  protect 
workmen  against  the  injustice  of  the  Capital- 
ist as  the  English  Trade  Unions  did.  They  do 
not  attempt  to  protect  workmen  against  the 
injustice  of  the  State  as  the  mediaeval  guilds 
did.    Obviously  they  cannot  protect  workmen 


158  UTOPIA  OF  USUEERS 

against  the  foreign  invader — especially  when 
(as  in  the  comic  case  of  Belgium)  they  are  im- 
posed by  the  foreign  invader.  What  then  are 
such  laws  designed  to  protect  workmen 
against?    Tigers,  rattlesnakes,  hyenas? 

Oh,  my  young  friends;  oh,  my  Christian 
brethren,  they  are  designed  to  protect  this  poor 
person  from  something  which  to  those  of  estab- 
lished rank  is  more  horrid  than  many  hyenas. 
They  are  designed,  my  friends,  to  protect  a 
man  from  himself — from  something  that  the 
masters  of  the  earth  fear  more  than  famine  or 
war,  and  which  Prussia  especially  fears  as 
everything  fears  that  which  would  certainly  be 
its  end.  They  are  meant  to  protect  a  man 
against  himself — that  is,  they  are  meant  to 
protect  a  man  against  his  manhood. 

And  if  anyone  reminds  me  that  there  is  a 
Socialist  Party  in  Germany,  I  reply  that  there 
isn't. 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE  IGNORANT 

That  anarchic  future  which  the  more  timid 
Tories  professed  to  fear  has  already  fallen 
upon  us.  We  are  ruled  hy  ignorant  people. 
But  the  most  ignorant  people  in  modern  Brit- 
ain are  to  be  found  in  the  upper  class,  the  mid- 
dle class,  and  especially  the  upper  middle  class. 
I  do  not  say  it  with  the  smallest  petulance  or 
even  distaste ;  these  classes  are  often  really  be- 
neficent in  their  breeding  or  their  hospitality,, 
or  their  humanity  to  animals. 

There  is  still  no  better  company  than  the 
young  at  the  two  Universities,  or  the  best  of 
the  old  in  the  Army  or  some  of  the  other  serv- 
ices. Also,  of  course,  there  are  exceptions  in 
the  matter  of  learning;  real  scholars  hke  Pro- 
fessor Gilbert  Murray  or  Professor  Philli- 

159 


160  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

more  are  not  ignorant,  though  they  are  gentle- 
men. But  when  one  looks  up  at  any  mass  of 
the  wealthier  and  more  powerful  classes,  at 
the  Grand  Stand  at  Epsom,  at  the  windows  of 
Park-lane,  at  the  people  at  a  full-dress  debate 
or  a  fashionable  wedding,  we  shall  be  safe  in 
saying  that  they  are,  for  the  most  part,  the 
most  ill-taught,  or  untaught,  creatures  in  these 
islands. 

Literally  Illiterate 

It  is  indeed  their  feeble  boast  that  they  are 
not  literally  illiterate.  They  are  always  saying 
the  ancient  barons  could  not  sign  their  own 
names — for  they  know  less  of  history  perhaps 
than  of  anything  else.  The  modern  barons, 
however,  can  sign  their  own  names — or  some- 
one else's  for  a  change.  They  can  sign  their 
own  names;  and  that  is  about  all  they  can  do. 
They  cannot  face  a  fact,  or  follow  an  argu- 
ment, or  feel  a  tradition ;  but,  least  of  all,  can 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE  IGNORANT    161 

they,  upon  any  persuasion,  read  through  a 
plain  impartial  book,  English  or  foreign,  that 
is  not  specially  written  to  soothe  their  panic  or 
to  please  their  pride.  Looking  up  at  these 
seats  of  the  mighty  I  can  only  say,  with  some- 
thing of  despair,  what  Robert  Lowe  said  of  the 
enfranchised  workmen:  "We  must  educate 
our  masters." 

I  do  not  mean  this  as  paradoxical,  or  even  as 
symbolical;  it  is  simply  tame  and  true.  The 
modern  English  rich  know  nothing  about 
things,  not  even  about  the  things  to  which  they 
appeal.  Compared  with  them,  the  poor  are 
pretty  sure  to  get  some  enlightenment,  even  if 
they  cannot  get  liberty;  they  must  at  least  be 
technical.  An  old  apprentice  learnt  a  trade, 
even  if  his  master  came  like  any  Turk  and 
banged  him  most  severely.  The  old  housewife 
knew  which  side  her  bread  was  buttered,  even 
if  it  were  so  thin  as  to  be  almost  imperceptible. 
The  old  sailor  knew  the  ropes ;  even  if  he  knew 


162  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

the  rope's  end.  Consequently,  when  any  of 
these  revolted,  they  were  concerned  with  things 
they  knew,  pains,  practical  impossibilities,  or 
the  personal  record. 

But  They  Know 

The  apprentice  cried  "Clubs!"  and  cracked 
his  neighbours'  heads  with  the  precision  and 
fineness  of  touch  which  only  manual  crafts- 
manship can  give.  The  housewives  who  flatly 
refused  to  cook  the  hot  dinner  knew  how  much 
or  how  little,  cold  meat  there  was  in  the  house. 
The  sailor  who  defied  discipline  by  mutinying 
at  the  Nore  did  not  defy  discipline  in  the  sense 
of  falling  off  the  rigging  or  letting  the  water 
into  the  hold.  Similarly  the  modern  proletar- 
iat, however  little  it  may  know,  knows  what  it 
is  talking  about. 

But  the  curious  thing  about  the  educated 
class  is  that  exactly  what  it  does  not  know  is 
what  it  is  talking  about.     I  mean  that  it  is 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE  IGNORANT    163 

startlingly  ignorant  of  those  special  things 
which  it  is  supposed  to  invoke  and  keep  in- 
violate. The  things  that  workmen  invoke  may 
be  uglier,  more  acrid,  more  sordid;  but  they 
know  all  about  them.  They  know  enough 
arithmetic  to  know  that  prices  have  risen:  the 
kind  Levantine  gentleman  is  always  there  to 
make  them  fully  understand  the  meaning  of 
an  interest  sum;  and  the  landlord  will  define 
'Rent  as  rigidly  as  Ricardo.  The  doctors  can 
always  teU  them  the  Latin  for  an  empty  stom- 
ach ;  and  when  the  poor  man  is  treated  for  the 
time  with  some  human  respect  (by  the  Coro- 
ner) it  almost  seems  a  pity  he  is  not  alive  to 
hear  how  legally  he  died. 

Against  this  bitter  shrewdness  and  bleak 
realism  in  the  suffering  classes  it  is  commonly 
supposed  that  the  more  leisured  classes  stand 
for  certain  legitimate  ideas  which  also  have 
their  place  in  life;  such  as  history,  reverence, 
the  love  of  the  land.    Well,  it  might  be  no  bad 


164  UTOPIA  OF  USUEERS 

thing  to  have  something,  even  if  it  were  some- 
thing narrow,  that  testified  to  the  truths  of  re- 
ligion or  patriotism.  But  such  narrow  things 
in  the  past  have  always  at  least  known  their 
own  history:  the  bigot  knew  his  catechism:  the 
patriot  knew  his  way  home.  The  astonishing 
thing  about  the  modern  rich  is  their  real  and 
sincere  ignorance — especially  of  the  things 
they  like. 

No! 

Take  the  most  topical  case  you  can  find  in 
any  drawing-room:  Belfast.  Ulster  is  most 
assuredly  a  matter  of  history;  and  there  is  a 
sense  in  which  Orange  resistance  is  a  matter 
of  religion.  But  go  and  ask  any  of  the  five 
hundred  fluttering  ladies  at  a  garden  party 
(who  find  Carson  so  splendid  and  Belfast  so 
thrilling)  what  it  is  all  about,  when  it  began, 
where  it  came  from,  what  it  really  maintains? 
What  was  the  history  of  Ulster?    What  is  the 


THE  EMPIRE  OF  THE  IGNORANT    165 

religion  of  Belfast?  Do  any  of  them  know 
where  Ulstermen  were  in  Grattan's  time;  do 
any  of  them  know  what  was  the  "Protestant- 
ism" that  came  from  Scotland  to  that  isle: 
Could  any  of  them  tell  what  part  of  the  old 
Catholic  system  it  really  denied? 

It  was  generally  something  that  the  flutter- 
ing ladies  find  in  their  own  Anglican  churches 
every  Sunday.  It  were  vain  to  ask  them  to 
state  the  doctrines  of  the  Calvinist  creed ;  they 
could  not  state  the  doctrines  of  their  own  creed. 
It  were  vain  to  tell  them  to  read  the  history 
of  Ireland;  they  have  never  read  the  history 
of  England.  It  would  matter  as  little  that 
they  do  not  know  these  things,  as  that  I  do  not 
know  German:  but  then  German  is  not  the 
only  thing  I  am  supposed  to  know.  History 
and  ritual  are  the  only  things  aristocrats  are 
supposed  to  know ;  and  they  don't  know  them. 


166  UTOPIA  OF  USUEEES 

Smile  and  Smile 

I  am  not  fed  on  turtle  soup  and  Tokay  be- 
cause of  my  exquisite  intimacy  with  the  style 
and  idiom  of  Heine  and  Richter.  The  English 
governing  class  is  fed  on  turtle  soup  and  To- 
kay to  represent  the  past,  of  which  it  is  liter- 
ally ignorant,  as  I  am  of  German  irregular 
verbs ;  and  to  represent  the  religious  traditions 
of  the  State,  when  it  does  not  know  three 
words  of  theology,  as  I  do  not  know  three 
words  of  German. 

This  is  the  last  insult  offered  by  the  proud 
to  the  humble.  They  rule  them  by  the  smiling 
terror  of  an  ancient  secret.  They  smile  and 
smile:  but  they  have  forgotten  the  secret. 


THE   SYMBOLISM  OF  KRUPP 

The  curious  position  of  the  Krupp  firm  in 
the  awful  story  developing  around  us  is  not 
quite  sufficiently  grasped.  There  is  a  kind  of 
academic  clarity  of  definition  which  does  not 
see  the  proportions  of  things  for  which  every- 
thing falls  within  a  definition,  and  nothing  ever 
breaks  beyond  it.  To  this  type  of  mind  (which 
is  valuable  when  set  to  its  special  and  narrow 
work)  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  exception 
that  proves  the  rule.  If  I  vote  for  confiscating 
some  usurer's  millions  I  am  doing,  they  say, 
precisely  what  I  should  be  doing  if  I  took  pen- 
nies out  of  a  blind  man's  hat.  They  are  both 
denials  of  the  principle  of  private  property, 
and  are  equally  right  and  equally  wrong,  ac- 
cording to  our  view  of  that  principle.    I  should 

167 


168  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

find  a  great  many  distinctions  to  draw  in  such 
a  matter.  First,  I  should  say  that  taking  a 
usurer's  money  by  proper  authority  is  not  rob- 
bery, but  recovery  of  stolen  goods.  Second,  I 
should  say  that  even  if  there  were  no  such 
thing  as  personal  property,  there  would  still 
be  such  a  thing  as  personal  dignity,  and  dif- 
ferent modes  of  robbery  would  diminish  it  in 
very  different  ways.  Similarly,  there  is  a 
truth,  but  only  a  half-truth,  in  the  saying  that 
all  modern  Powers  alike  rely  on  the  Capitalist 
and  make  war  on  the  lines  of  Capitalism.  It 
is  true,  and  it  is  disgraceful.  But  it  is  not 
equally  true  and  equally  disgraceful.  It  is  not 
true  that  Montenegro  is  as  much  ruled  by 
financiers  as  Prussia,  just  as  it  is  not  true  that 
as  many  men  in  the  Kaiserstrasse,  in  Berlin, 
wear  long  knives  in  their  belts  as  wear  them  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  the  Black  Mountain.  It 
is  not  true  that  every  peasant  from  one  of  the 
old  Russian  communes  is  the  immediate  serv- 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  KRUPP      169 

ant  of  a  rich  man,  as  is  every  employee  of  Mr. 
Rockefeller.  It  is  as  false  as  the  statement 
that  no  poor  people  in  America  can  read  or 
write.  There  is  an  element  of  Capitalism  in 
all  modern  countries,  as  there  is  an  element  of 
illiteracy  in  all  modern  countries.  There  are 
some  who  think  that  the  number  of  our  fellow- 
citizens  who  can  sign  their  names  ought  to 
comfort  us  for  the  extreme  fewness  of  those 
who  have  anything  in  the  bank  to  sign  it  for, 
but  I  am  not  one  of  these. 

In  any  case,  the  position  of  Krupp  has  cer- 
tain interesting  aspects.  When  we  talk  of 
Army  contractors  as  among  the  base  but  active 
actualities  of  war,  we  commonly  mean  that 
while  the  contractor  benefits  by  the  war,  the 
war,  on  the  whole,  rather  suffers  by  the  con- 
tractor. We  regard  this  unsoldierly  middle- 
man with  disgust,  or  great  anger,  or  contemp- 
tuous acquiescence,  or  commercial  dread  and 
silence,  according  to  our  personal  position  and 


170  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

character.  But  we  nowhere  think  of  him  as 
having  anything  to  do  with  fighting  in  the  final 
sense.  Those  worthy  and  wealthy  persons  who 
employ  women's  labour  at  a  few  shillings  a 
week  do  not  do  it  to  obtain  the  best  clothes  for 
the  soldiers,  but  to  make  a  sufficient  profit  on 
the  worst.  The  only  argument  is  whether  such 
clothes  are  just  good  enough  for  the  soldiers, 
or  are  too  bad  for  anybody  or  anything.  We 
tolerate  the  contractor,  or  we  do  not  tolerate 
him;  but  no  one  admires  him  especially,  and 
certainly  no  one  gives  him  any  credit  for  any 
success  in  the  war.  Confessedly  or  unconfes- 
sedly  we  knock  his  profits,  not  only  off  what 
goes  to  the  taxpayer,  but  what  goes  to  the  sol- 
dier. We  know  the  Army  will  not  fight  any 
better,  at  least,  because  the  clothes  they  wear 
were  stitched  by  wretched  women  who  could 
hardly  see;  or  because  their  boots  were  made 
by  harassed  helots,  who  never  had  time  to 
think.    In  war-time  it  is  very  widely  confessed 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  KRUPP      171 

that  Capitalism  is  not  a  good  way  of  ruling  a 
patriotic  or  self-respecting  people,  and  all 
sorts  of  other  things,  from  strict  State  organ- 
isation to  quite  casual  personal  charity,  are 
hastily  substituted  for  it.  It  is  recognised  that 
the  "great  employer,"  nine  times  out  of  ten,  is 
no  more  than  the  schoolboy  or  the  page  who 
pilfers  tarts  and  sweets  from  the  dishes  as  they 
go  up  and  down.  How  angry  one  is  with  him 
depends  on  temperament,  on  the  stage  of  the 
dinner — also  on  the  number  of  tarts. 

Now  here  comes  in  the  real  and  sinister  sig- 
nificance of  Krupps.  There  are  many  capi- 
talists in  Europe  as  rich,  as  vulgar,  as  selfish, 
as  rootedly  opposed  to  any  fellowship  of  the 
fortunate  and  unfortunate.  But  there  is  no 
other  capitalist  who  claims,  or  can  pretend  to 
claim,  that  he  has  very  appreciably  helped  the 
activities  of  his  people  in  war.  I  will  suppose 
that  Lipton  did  not  deserve  the  very  severe 
criticisms  made  on  his  firm  by  Mr.  Justice 


172  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Darling;  but,  however  blameless  he  was,  no- 
body can  suppose  that  British  soldiers  would 
charge  better  with  the  bayonet  because  they 
had  some  particular  kind  of  groceries  inside 
them.  But  Krupp  can  make  a  plausible  claim 
that  the  huge  infernal  machines  to  which  his 
country  owes  nearly  all  of  its  successes  could 
only  have  been  produced  under  the  equally  in- 
fernal conditions  of  the  modern  factory  and 
the  urban  and  proletarian  civilisation.  That  is 
why  the  victory  of  Germany  would  be  simply 
the  victory  of  Krupp,  and  the  victory  of 
Krupp  would  be  simply  the  victory  of  Capital- 
ism. There,  and  there  alone.  Capitalism 
would  be  able  to  point  to  something  done  suc- 
cessfully for  a  whole  nation — done  ( as  it  would 
certainly  maintain)  better  than  small  free 
States  or  natural  democracies  could  have  done 
it.  I  confess  I  think  the  modern  Germans  mor- 
ally second-rate,  and  I  think  that  even  war, 
when  it  is  conducted  most  successfully  by  ma- 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  KRUPP      173 

chinery,  is  second-rate  war.  But  this  second- 
rate  war  will  become  not  only  the  first  but  the 
only  brand,  if  the  cannon  of  Krupp  should  con- 
quer; and,  what  is  very  much  worse,  it  will  be 
the  only  intelligent  answer  that  any  capitalist 
has  yet  given  against  our  case  that  Capitalism 
is  as  wasteful  and  as  weak  as  it  is  certainly 
wicked.  I  do  not  fear  any  such  finality,  for  I 
happen  to  believe  in  the  kind  of  men  who  fight 
best  with  bayonets  and  whose  fathers  ham- 
mered their  own  pikes  for  the  French  Revo- 
lution. 


THE   TOWER  OF  BEBEL 

Among  the  cloudy  and  symbolic  stories  in 
the  beginning  of  the  Bible  there  is  one  about 
a  tower  built  with  such  vertical  energy  as  to 
take  a  hold  on  heaven,  but  ruined  and  resulting 
only  in  a  confusion  of  tongues.  The  story 
might  be  interpreted  in  many  ways — reli- 
giously, as  meaning  that  spiritual  insolence 
starts  all  human  separations;  irreligiously,  as 
meaning  that  the  inhuman  heavens  grudge 
man  his  magnificent  dream;  or  merely  satir- 
ically as  suggesting  that  all  attempts  to  reach 
a  higher  agreement  always  end  in  more  dis- 
agreement than  there  was  before.  It  might  be 
taken  by  the  partially  intelligent  Kensitite  as 
a  judgment  on  Latin  Christians  for  talking 
Latin.     It  might  be  taken  by  the  somewhat 

174 


THE  TOWER  OF  BEBEL  175 

less  intelligent  Professor  Harnack  as  a  final 
proof  that  all  prehistoric  humanity  talked  Ger- 
man. But  when  all  was  said,  the  symbol  would 
remain  that  a  plain  tower,  as  straight  as  a 
sword,  as  simple  as  a  lily,  did  nevertheless  pro- 
duce the  deepest  divisions  that  have  been 
known  among  men.  In  any  case  we  of  the 
world  in  revolt — Syndicalists,  Socialists,  Guild 
Socialists,  or  whatever  we  call  ourselves — have 
no  need  to  worry  about  the  scripture  or  the 
allegory.  We  have  the  reality.  For  whatever 
reason,  what  is  said  to  have  happened  to  the 
people  of  Shinak  has  precisely  and  practically 
happened  to  us. 

None  of  us  who  have  known  Socialists  (or 
rather,  to  speak  more  truthfully,  none  of  us 
who  have  been  Socialists)  can  entertain  the 
faintest  doubt  that  a  fine  intellectual  sincerity 
lay  behind  what  was  called  "L'lnternation- 
ale."  It  was  really  felt  that  Socialism  was 
universal  like  arithmetic.    It  was  too  true  for 


176  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

idiom  or  turn  of  phrase.  In  the  formula  of 
Karl  Marx  men  could  find  that  frigid  fellow- 
ship which  they  find  when  they  agree  that  two 
and  two  make  four.  It  was  almost  as  broad- 
minded  as  a  religious  dogma. 

Yet  this  universal  language  has  not  suc- 
ceeded, at  a  moment  of  crisis,  in  imposing  it- 
self on  the  whole  world.  Nay,  it  has  not,  at 
the  moment  of  crisis,  succeeded  in  imposing  it- 
self on  its  own  principal  champions.  Herve  is 
not  talking  Economic  Esperanto ;  he  is  talking 
French.  Bebel  is  not  talking  Economic  Es- 
peranto; he  is  talking  German.  Blatchford  is 
not  talking  Economic  Esperanto;  he  is  talking 
English,  and  jolly  good  English,  too.  I  do 
not  know  whether  French  or  Flemish  was  Van- 
dervelde's  nursery  speech,  but  I  am  quite  cer- 
tain he  will  know  more  of  it  after  this  struggle 
than  he  knew  before.  In  short,  whether  or  no 
there  be  a  new  union  of  hearts,  there  has  really 
and  truly  been  a  new  division  of  tongues. 


THE  TOWER  OF  BEBEL  177 

How  are  we  to  explain  this  singular  truth, 
even  if  we  deplore  it?  I  dismiss  with  fitting 
disdain  the  notion  that  it  is  a  mere  result  of 
military  terrorism  or  snobbish  social  pressure. 
The  Socialist  leaders  of  modern  Europe  are 
among  the  most  sincere  men  in  history;  and 
their  Nationalist  note  in  this  affair  has  had  the 
ring  of  their  sincerity.  I  will  not  waste  time 
on  the  speculation  that  Vandervelde  is  bullied 
by  Belgian  priests;  or  that  Blatchford  is 
frightened  of  the  horse-guards  outside  White- 
hall. These  great  men  support  the  enthusiasm 
of  their  conventional  countrymen  because  they 
share  it;  and  they  share  it  because  there  is 
(though  perhaps  only  at  certain  great  mo- 
ments) such  a  thing  as  pure  democracy. 

Timour  the  Tartar,  I  think,  celebrated  some 
victory  with  a  tower  built  entirely  out  of  hu- 
man skulls;  perhaps  he  thought  that  would 
reach  to  heaven.  But  there  is  no  cement  in 
such  building;  the  veins  and  ligaments  that 


178  UTOPIA  OF  USUKERS 

hold  humanity  together  have  long  fallen  away; 
the  skulls  will  roll  impotently  at  a  touch;  and 
ten  thousand  more  such  trophies  could  only 
make  the  tower  taller  and  crazier.  I  think  the 
modern  official  apparatus  of  "votes"  is  very 
like  that  tottering  monument.  I  think  the 
Tartar  "counted  heads,"  like  an  electioneering 
agent.  Sometimes  when  I  have  seen  from  the 
platform  of  some  paltry  party  meeting  the 
rows  and  rows  of  grinning  upturned  faces,  I 
have  felt  inclined  to  say,  as  the  poet  does  in 
the  "The  Vision  of  Sin"— 

"Welcome  fellow-citizens, 
Hollow  hearts  and  empty  heads." 

Not  that  the  people  were  personally  hollow  or 
empty,  but  they  had  come  on  a  hollow  and 
empty  business :  to  help  the  good  Mr.  Binks  to 
strengthen  the  Insurance  Act  against  the 
wicked  Mr.  Jinks  who  would  only  promise  to 


THE  TOWER  OF  BEBEL  179 

fortify  the  Insurance  Act.  That  night  it  did 
not  blow  the  democratic  gale.  Yet  it  can  blow 
on  these  as  on  others;  and  when  it  does  blow 
men  learn  many  things.  I,  for  one,  am  not 
above  learning  them. 

The  Marxian  dogma  which  simplifies  all 
conflicts  to  the  Class  War  is  so  much  nobler  a 
thing  than  the  nose-counting  of  the  parlia- 
ments that  one  must  apologise  for  the  compari- 
son. And  yet  there  is  a  comparison.  When 
we  used  to  say  that  there  were  so  many  thou- 
sands of  Socialists  in  Germany,  we  were 
counting  by  skulls.  When  we  said  that  the 
majority  consisting  of  Proletarians  would  be 
everywhere  opposed  to  the  minority,  consist- 
ing of  Capitalists,  we  were  counting  by  skulls. 
Why,  yes ;  if  all  men's  heads  had  been  cut  off 
from  the  rest  of  them,  as  they  were  by  the 
good  sense  and  foresight  of  Timour  the  Tar- 
tar; if  they  had  no  hearts  or  bellies  to  be 
moved;  no  hand  that  flies  up  to  ward  off  a 


180  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

weapon,  no  foot  that  can  feel  a  familiar  soil — 
if  things  were  so  the  Marxian  calculation  would 
be  not  only  complete  but  correct.  As  we  know 
to-day,  the  Marxian  calculation  is  complete, 
but  it  is  not  correct. 

Now,  this  is  the  answer  to  the  questions  of 
some  kind  critics,  whose  actual  words  I  have 
not  within  reach  at  the  moment,  about  whether 
my  democracy  meant  the  rule  of  the  majority 
over  the  minority.  It  means  the  rule  of  the 
rule — the  rule  of  the  rule  over  the  .exception. 
When  a  nation  finds  a  soul  it  clothes  it  with  a 
body,  and  does  verily  act  like  one  living  thing. 
There  is  nothing  to  be  said  about  those  who  are 
out  of  it,  except  that  they  are  out  of  it.  After 
talking  about  it  in  the  abstract  for  decades, 
this  is  Democracy,  and  it  is  marvellous  in  our 
eyes.  It  is  not  the  difference  between  ninety- 
nine  persons  and  a  hundred  persons;  it  is  one 
person — the  people.  I  do  not  know  or  care 
how  many  or  how  few  of  the  Belgians  like  or 


THE  TOWER  OF  BEBEL  181 

dislike  the  pictures  of  Wiertz.  They  could  not 
be  either  justified  or  condemned  by  a  mere  ma- 
jority of  Belgians.  But  I  am  very  certain  that 
the  defiance  to  Prussia  did  not  come  from  a 
majority  of  Belgians.  It  came  from  Belgium 
one  and  indivisible — atheists,  priests,  princes  of 
the  blood,  Frenchified  shopkeepers,  Flemish 
boors,  men,  women,  and  children,  and  the 
sooner  we  understand  that  this  sort  of  thing 
can  happen  the  better  for  us.  For  it  is  this 
spontaneous  spiritual  fellowship  of  communi- 
ties under  certain  conditions  to  which  the  four 
or  five  most  independent  minds  of  Europe  will- 
ingly bear  witness  to-day. 

But  is  there  no  exception:  is  there  no  one 
faithful  among  the  unfaithful  found?  Is  no 
great  Socialist  politician  still  untouched  by  the 
patriotism  of  the  vulgar?  Why,  yes;  the 
rugged  Ramsay  MacDonald,  scarred  with  a 
hundred  savage  fights  against  the  capitalist 
parties,  still  lifts  up  his  horny  hand  for  peace. 


182  UTOPIA  OF  USUKEKS 

What  further  need  have  we  of  witnesses?  I, 
for  my  part,  am  quite  satisfied,  and  do  not 
doubt  that  Mr.  MacDonald  will  be  as  indus- 
trious in  damping  down  democracy  in  this 
form  as  in  every  other. 


A  REAL  DANGER 

Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  once  more 
wade  in  those  swamps  of  logomachy  and  tau- 
tology in  which  the  old  guard  of  the  Deter- 
minists  still  seem  to  be  floundering.  The  ques- 
tion of  Fate  and  Free  Will  can  never  attain 
to  a  conclusion,  though  it  may  attain  to  a  con- 
viction. The  shortest  philosophic  summary  is 
that  both  cause  and  choice  are  ultimate  ideas 
within  us,  and  that  if  one  man  denies  choice 
because  it  seems  contrary  to  cause,  the  other 
man  has  quite  as  much  right  to  deny  cause  be- 
cause it  seems  contrary  to  choice.  The  short- 
est ethical  summary  is  that  Determinism  either 
affects  conduct  or  it  does  not.  If  it  does  not, 
it  is  morally  not  worth  preaching ;  if  it  does,  it 
must  affect  conduct  in  the  direction  of  impo- 

183 


184  UTOPIA  OF  USUKERS 

tence  and  submission.    A  writer  in  the  "Clar- 
ion" says  that  the  reformer  cannot  help  trying 
to  reform,  nor  the  Conservative  help  his  Con- 
servatism.   But  suppose  the  reformer  tries  to 
reform  the  Conservative  and  turn  him  into 
another  reformer?     Either  he  can,  in  which 
case  Determinism  has  made  no  difference  at 
all,  or  he  can't,  in  which  case  it  can  only  have 
made  reformers  more  hopeless  and  Conserva- 
tives more  obstinate.    And  the  shortest  practi- 
cal and  political  summary  is  that  working  men, 
most  probably,  will  soon  be  much  too  busy 
using  their  Free  Will  to  stop  to  prove  that  they 
have  got  it.    Nevertheless,  I  like  to  watch  the 
Determinist  in  the  "Clarion"  Cockpit  every 
week,  as  busy  as  a  squirrel — in  a  cage.     But 
being  myself  a  squirrel  (leaping  lightly  from 
bough  to  bough)  and  preferring  the  form  of 
activity  which  occasionally  ends   in  nuts,   I 
should  not  intervene  in  the  matter  even  indi- 
rectly, except  upon  a  practical  point.    And  the 


A  KEAL  DANGEE  185 

point  I  have  in  mind  is  practical  to  the  extent 
of  deadly  peril.  It  is  another  of  the  numerous 
new  ways  in  which  the  restless  rich,  now  walk- 
ing the  world  with  an  awful  insomnia,  may 
manage  to  catch  us  napping. 

Must  Be  a  Mystery 

There  are  two  letters  in  the  "Clarion"  this 
week  which  in  various  ways  interest  me  very 
much.  One  is  concerned  to  defend  Darwin 
against  the  scientific  revolt  against  him  that 
was  led  by  Samuel  Butler,  and  among  other 
things  it  calls  Bernard  Shaw  a  back  number. 
Well,  most  certainly  "The  Origin  of  Species" 
is  a  back  number,  in  so  far  as  any  honest  and 
interesting  book  ever  can  be ;  but  in  pure  phi- 
losophy nothing  can  be  out  of  date,  since  the 
universe  must  be  a  mystery  even  to  the  be- 
liever. There  is,  however,  one  condition  of 
things  in  which  I  do  call  it  relevant  to  describe 
somebody  as  behind  the  times.    That  is  when 


186  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

the  man  in  question,  thinking  of  some  state  of 
affairs  that  has  passed  away,  is  really  helping 
the  very  things  he  would  like  to  hinder.  The 
principles  cannot  alter,  but  the  problems  can. 
Thus,  I  should  call  a  man  behind  the  times  who, 
in  the  year  1872,  pleaded  for  the  peaceful  Ger- 
man peasants  against  the  triumphant  militar- 
ism of  Napoleon.  Or  I  should  call  a  man  out 
of  date  who,  in  the  year  1892,  wished  for  a 
stronger  Navy  to  compete  with  the  Nav}^  of 
Holland,  because  it  had  once  swept  the  sea  and 
sailed  up  the  Thames.  And  I  certainly  call  a 
man  or  a  movement  out  of  date  that,  in  the 
year  1914,  when  we  few  are  fighting  a  giant 
machine,  strengthened  with  all  material  wealth 
and  worked  with  all  the  material  sciences, 
thinks  that  our  chief  danger  is  from  an  excess 
of  moral  and  religious  responsibility.  He  re- 
minds me  of  Mr.  Snodgrass,  who  had  the  pres- 
ence of  mind  to  call  out  "Fire!"  when  Mr. 
Pickwick  fell  through  the  ice. 


A  REAL  DANGER  187 

The  other  letter  consists  of  the  usual  wire- 
drawn argument  for  fatalism.  Man  cannot 
imagine  the  universe  being  created,  and  there- 
fore is  "compelled  by  his  reason"  to  think  the 
universe  without  beginning  or  end,  which  (I 
may  remark)  he  cannot  imagine  either.  But 
the  letter  ends  with  something  much  more  omi- 
nous than  bad  metaphysics.  Here,  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  "Clarion,"  in  the  centre  of  a  clean 
and  combative  democratic  sheet,  I  meet  again 
my  deplorable  old  acquaintance,  the  scientific 
criminologist.  "The  so-called  evil-doer  should 
not  be  punished  for  his  acts,  but  restrained." 
In  forty-eight  hours  I  could  probably  get  a 
petition  to  that  eflPect  signed  by  millionaires. 
A  short  time  ago  a  Bill  was  introduced  to  hold 
irresponsible  and  "restrain"  a  whole  new  class 
of  people,  who  were  "incapable  of  managing 
their  affairs  with  prudence."  Read  the  sup- 
porters' names  on  the  back  of  that  Bill,  and 
see  what  sort  of  democrats  they  were. 


188  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Now,  clearing  our  heads  of  what  is  called 
popular  science  (which  means  going  to  sleep 
to  a  lullaby  of  long  words) ,  let  us  use  our  own 
brains  a  little,  and  ask  ourselves  what  is  the 
real  difference  between  punishing  a  man  and 
restraining  him.  The  material  difference  may 
be  any  or  none;  for  punishment  may  be  very 
mild,  and  restraint  may  be  very  ruthless.  The 
man,  of  course,  must  dislike  one  as  much  as 
the  other,  or  it  would  not  be  necessary  to  re- 
strain him  at  all.  And  I  assure  you  he  will 
get  no  great  glow  of  comfort  out  of  your  call- 
ing him  irresponsible  after  you  have  made  him 
impotent.  A  man  does  not  necessarily  feel 
more  free  and  easy  in  a  straight  waistcoat  than 
in  a  stone  cell.  The  moral  difference  is  that 
a  man  can  be  punished  for  a  crime  because  he 
is  born  a  citizen;  while  he  can  be  constrained 
because  he  is  born  a  slave.  But  one  arresting 
and  tremendous  difference  towers  over  all  these 
doubtful  or  arguable  differences.     There  is 


A  EEAL  DANGER  189 

one  respect,  vital  to  all  our  liberties  and  all  our 
lives,  in  which  the  new  restraint  would  be  dif- 
ferent from  the  old  punishment.  It  is  of  this 
that  the  plutocrats  will  take  advantage. 

The  Plain  Difference 

The  perfectly  plain  difference  is  this.  All 
punishment,  even  the  most  horrible,  proceeds 
upon  the  assumption  that  the  extent  of  the 
evil  is  known,  and  that  a  certain  amount  of 
expiation  goes  with  it.  Even  if  you  hang  the 
man,  you  cannot  hang  him  twice.  Even  if  you 
burn  him,  you  cannot  burn  him  for  a  month. 
And  in  the  case  of  all  ordinary  imprisonments, 
the  whole  aim  of  free  institutions  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  world  has  been  to  insist  that  a 
man  shall  be  convicted  of  a  definite  crime  and 
confined  for  a  definite  period.  But  the  mo- 
ment you  admit  this  notion  of  medical  restraint, 
you  must  in  fairness  admit  that  it  may  go  on 


190  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

as  long  as  the  authorities  choose  to  think  (or 
say)  that  it  ought  to  go  on.  The  man's  punish- 
ment refers  to  the  past,  which  is  supposed  to 
have  been  investigated,  and  which,  in  some  de- 
gree at  least,  has  been  investigated.  But  his 
restraint  refers  to  the  future,  which  his  doc- 
tors, keepers,  and  wardens  have  yet  to  investi- 
gate. The  simple  result  will  be  that,  in  the 
scientific  Utopia  of  the  "Clarion,"  men  like 
Mann  or  Syme  or  Larkin  will  not  be  put  in 
prison  because  of  what  they  have  done.  They 
will  be  kept  in  prison  because  of  what  they 
might  do.  Indeed,  the  builders  of  the  new 
tyranny  have  already  come  very  near  to  avow- 
ing this  scientific  and  futurist  method.  When 
the  lawyers  tried  to  stop  the  "Suffragette" 
from  appearing  at  all,  they  practically  said: 
"We  do  not  know  your  next  week's  crime,  be- 
cause it  isn't  committed  yet;  but  we  are  scien- 
tifically certain  you  have  the  criminal  type. 
And  by  the  sublime  and  unalterable  laws  of 


A  REAL  DANGER  191 

heredity,  all  your  poor  little  papers  will  in- 
herit it." 

This  is  a  purely  practical  question ;  and  that 
is  why  I  insist  on  it,  even  in  such  strenuous 
times.  The  writers  on  the  "Clarion"  have  a 
perfect  right  to  think  Christianity  is  the  foe 
of  freedom,  or  even  that  the  stupidity  and 
tyranny  of  the  present  Government  is  due  to 
the  monkish  mysticism  of  Lord  Morley  and 
Mr.  John  M.  Robertson.  They  have  a  right 
to  think  the  theory  of  Determinism  as  true  as 
Calvin  thought  it.  But  I  do  not  like  seeing 
them  walk  straight  into  the  enormous  iron  trap 
set  open  by  the  Capitalists,  who  find  it  con- 
venient to  make  our  law  even  more  lawless  than 
it  is.  The  rich  men  want  a  scientist  to  write 
them  a  lettre  de  cachet  as  a  doctor  writes  a 
prescription.  And  so  they  wish  to  seal  up  in 
a  public  gaol  the  scandals  of  a  private  asylum. 
Yes;  the  writers  on  the  "Clarion"  are  indeed 
claiming   irresponsibility   for   human   beings. 


192  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

But  it  is  the  governments  that  will  be  irrespon- 
sible, not  the  governed. 

But  I  will  tell  them  one  small  secret  in  con- 
clusion. There  is  nothing  whatever  wrong  in 
the  ancient  and  universal  idea  of  Punishment 
— except  that  we  are  not  punishing  the  right 
people. 


THE   DREGS   OF   PURITANISM 

One  peculiarity  of  the  genuine  kind  of 
enemy  of  the  people  is  that  his  slightest  phrase 
is  clamorous  with  all  his  sins.  Pride,  vain- 
glory, and  hypocrisy  seem  present  in  his  very 
grammar ;  in  his  very  verbs  or  adverbs  or  prep- 
ositions, as  well  as  in  what  he  says,  which  is 
generally  bad  enough.  Thus  I  see  that  a  Non- 
conformist pastor  in  Bromley  has  been  talking 
about  the  pathetic  little  presents  of  tobacco 
sent  to  the  common  soldiers.  This  is  how  he 
talks  about  it.  He  is  reported  as  having  said, 
"By  the  help  of  God,  they  wanted  this  cigarette 
business  stopped."  How  one  could  write  a 
volume  on  that  sentence,  a  great  thick  volume 
called  "The  Decline  of  the  English  Middle 

193 


194  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Class."  In  taste,  in  style,  in  philosophy,  in 
feeling,  in  political  project,  the  horrors  of  it  are 
as  unfathomable  as  hell. 

First,  to  begin  with  the  trifle,  note  something 
slipshod  and  vague  in  the  mere  verbiage,  typi- 
cal of  those  who  prefer  a  catchword  to  a  creed. 
"This  cigarette  business"  might  mean  any- 
thing. It  might  mean  Messrs.  Salmon  and 
Gluckstein's  business.  But  the  pastor  at 
Bromley  will  not  interfere  with  that,  for  the 
indignation  of  his  school  of  thought,  even  when 
it  is  sincere,  always  instinctively  and  uncon- 
sciously swerves  aside  from  anything  that  is 
rich  and  powerful  like  the  partners  in  a  big 
business,  and  strikes  instead  something  that  is 
poor  and  nameless  like  the  soldiers  in  a  trench. 
Nor  does  the  expression  make  clear  who  "they" 
are — whether  the  inhabitants  of  Britain  or  the 
inliabitants  of  Bromley,  or  the  inhabitants  of 
this  one  crazy  tabernacle  in  Bromley ;  nor  is  it 
evident  how  it  is  going  to  be  stopped  or  who  is 


THE  DREGS  OF  PURITANISM    195 

being  asked  to  stop  it.  All  these  things  are 
trifles  compared  to  the  more  terrible  offences 
of  the  phrase;  but  they  are  not  without  their 
social  and  historical  interest.  About  the  be- 
ginning of  the  nineteenth  century  the  wealthy 
Puritan  class,  generally  the  class  of  the  em- 
ployers of  labour,  took  a  line  of  argument 
which  was  narrow,  but  not  nonsensical.  They 
saw  the  relation  of  rich  and  poor  quite  coldly 
as  a  contract,  but  they  saw  that  a  contract 
holds  both  ways.  The  Puritans  of  the  middle 
class,  in  short,  did  in  some  sense  start  talking 
and  thinking  for  themselves.  They  are  still 
talking.  They  have  long  ago  left  off  thinking. 
They  talk  about  the  loyalty  of  workmen  to 
their  employers,  and  God  knows  what  rubbish ; 
and  the  first  small  certainty  about  the  reverend 
gentleman  whose  sentence  I  have  quoted  is  that 
his  brain  stopped  working  as  a  clock  stops, 
years  and  years  ago. 

Second,  consider  the  quality  of  the  religious 


196  UTOPIA  OP  USURERS 

literature !  These  people  are  always  telling  us 
that  the  English  translated  Bible  is  sufficient 
training  for  anyone  in  noble  and  appropriate 
diction;  and  so  it  is.  Why,  then,  are  they  not 
trained  ?  They  are  always  telling  us  that  Bun- 
yan,  the  rude  Midland  tinker,  is  as  much  worth 
reading  as  Chaucer  or  Spenser;  and  so  he  is. 
Why,  then,  have  they  not  read  him?  I  can- 
not believe  that  anyone  who  had  seen,  even  in 
a  nightmare  of  the  nursery,  Apollyon  strad- 
dling over  the  whole  breadth  of  the  way  could 
realiy  write  like  that  about  a  cigarette.  By 
the  help  of  God,  they  wanted  this  cigarette 
business  stopped.  Therefore,  with  angels  and 
archangels  and  the  whole  company  of  Heaven, 
with  St.  Michael,  smiter  of  Satan  and  Captain 
of  the  Chivalry  of  God,  with  all  the  ardour 
of  the  seraphs  and  the  flaming  patience  of  the 
saints,  we  will  have  this  cigarette  business 
stopped.  Where  has  all  the  tradition  of  the 
great  religious  literatures  gone  to  that  a  man 


THE  DREGS  OF  PURITANISM     197 

should  come  on  such  a  bathos  with  such  a 
bump? 

Thirdly,  of  course,  there  is  the  lack  of  imag- 
inative proportion,  which  rises  into  a  sort  of 
towering  blasphemy.  An  enormous  number 
of  live  young  men  are  being  hurt  by  shells,  hurt 
by  bullets,  hurt  by  fever  and  hunger  and  hor- 
ror of  hope  deferred ;  hurt  by  lance  blades  and 
sword  blades  and  bayonet  blades  breaking  into 
the  bloody  house  of  life.  But  Mr.  Price  (I 
think  that's  his  name)  is  still  anxious  that  they 
should  not  be  hurt  by  cigarettes.  That  is  the 
sort  of  maniacal  isolation  that  can  be  found  in 
the  deserts  of  Bromley.  That  cigarettes  are 
bad  for  the  health  is  a  very  tenable  opinion  to 
which  the  minister  is  quite  entitled.  If  he  hap- 
pens to  think  that  the  youth  of  Bromley  smoke 
too  many  cigarettes,  and  that  he  has  any  in- 
fluence in  urging  on  them  the  unhealthiness  of 
the  habit,  I  should  not  blame  him  if  he  gave 
sermons  or  lectures  about  it  (with  magic-Ian- 


198  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

tern  slides),  so  long  as  it  was  in  Bromley  and 
about  Bromley.  Cigarettes  may  be  bad  for  the 
health:  bombs  and  bayonets  and  even  barbed 
wire  are  not  good  for  the  health.  I  never  met 
a  doctor  who  recommended  any  of  them.  But 
the  trouble  with  this  sort  of  man  is  that  he  can- 
not adjust  himself  to  the  scale  of  things.  He 
would  do  very  good  service  if  he  would  go 
among  the  rich  aristocratic  ladies  and  tell  them 
not  to  take  drugs  in  a  chronic  sense,  as  people 
take  opium  in  China.  But  he  would  be  doing 
very  bad  service  if  he  were  to  go  among  the 
doctors  and  nurses  on  the  field  and  tell  them 
not  to  give  drugs,  as  they  give  morphia  in  a  hos- 
pital. But  it  is  the  whole  hypothesis  of  war, 
it  is  its  very  nature  and  first  principle,  that  the 
man  in  the  trench  is  almost  as  much  a  suffering 
and  abnormal  person  as  the  man  in  the  hospital. 
Hit  or  unhit,  conqueror  or  conquered,  he  is, 
by  nature  of  the  case,  having  less  pleasure  than 
is  proper  and  natural  to  a  man. 


THE  DREGS  OF  PURITANISM     199 

Fourth  (for  I  need  not  dwell  here  on  the 
mere  diabolical  idiocy  that  can  regard  beer  or 
tobacco  as  in  some  way  evil  and  unseemly  in 
themselves),  there  is  the  most  important  ele- 
ment in  this  strange  outbreak;  at  least,  the 
most  dangerous  and  the  most  important  for  us. 
There  is  that  main  feature  in  the  degradation 
of  the  old  middle  class :  the  utter  disappearance 
of  its  old  appetite  for  liberty.  Here  there  is 
no  question  of  whether  the  men  are  to  smoke 
cigarettes,  or  the  women  choose  to  send  cigar- 
ettes, or  even  that  the  officers  or  doctors  choose 
to  aUow  cigarettes.  The  thing  is  to  cease, 
and  we  may  note  one  of  the  most  recurrent 
ideas  of  the  servile  State:  it  is  mentioned  in 
the  passive  mood.  It  must  be  stopped,  and 
we  must  not  even  ask  who  has  stopped  it! 


THE  TYRANNY  OF  BAD  JOURNA- 
LISM 

The  amazing  decision  of  the  Government  to 
employ  methods  quite  ahen  to  England,  and 
rather  belonging  to  the  police  of  the  Continent, 
probably  arises  from  the  appearance  of  papers 
which  are  lucid  and  fighting,  like  the  papers  of 
the  Continent.  The  business  may  be  put  in 
many  ways.  But  one  way  of  putting  it  is 
simply  to  say  that  a  monopoly  of  bad  journa- 
lism is  resisting  the  possibility  of  good  journa- 
lism. Journalism  is  not  the  same  thing  as 
literature;  but  there  is  good  and  bad  journa- 
lism, as  there  is  good  and  bad  literature,  as 
there  is  good  and  bad  football.  For  the  last 
twenty  years  or  so  the  plutocrats  who  govern 
England  have  allowed  the  English  nothing  but 

200 


TYRANNY  OF  BAD  JOURNALISM    201 

bad  journalism.  Very  bad  journalism,  simply 
considered  as  journalism. 

It  always  takes  a  considerable  time  to  see  the 
simple  and  central  fact  about  anything.  All 
sorts  of  things  have  been  said  about  the  modern 
Press,  especially  the  Yellow  Press;  that  it  is 
Jingo  or  Philistine  or  sensational  or  wrongly 
inquisitive  or  vulgar  or  indecent  or  trivial; "but 
none  of  these  have  anything  really  to  do  with 
the  point. 

The  point  about  the  Press  is  that  it  is  not 
what  it  is  called.  It  is  not  the  "popular  Press." 
It  is  not  the  Public  Press.  It  is  not  an  organ 
of  public  opinion.  It  is  a  conspiracy  of  a  very 
few  millionaires,  all  sufficiently  similar  in  type 
to  agree  on  the  limits  of  what  this  great  nation 
(to  which  we  belong)  may  know  about  itself 
and  its  friends  and  enemies.  The  ring  is  not 
quite  complete;  there  are  old-fashioned  and 
honest  papers:  but  it  is  sufficiently  near  to 
completion  to  produce  on  the  ordinary  pur- 


202  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

chaser  of  news  the  practical  effects  of  a  corner 
and  a  monopoly.  He  receives  all  his  political 
information  and  all  his  political  marching  or- 
ders from  what  is  by  this  time  a  sort  of 
half-conscious  secret  society,  with  very  few 
members,  but  a  great  deal  of  money. 

This  enormous  and  essential  fact  is  concealed 
for  us  by  a  number  of  legends  that  have  passed 
into  common  speech.  There  is  the  notion  that 
the  Press  is  flashy  or  trivial  because  it  is  popu- 
lar. In  other  words,  an  attempt  is  made  to 
discredit  democracy  by  representing  journa- 
lism as  the  natural  literature  of  democracy. 
All  this  is  cold  rubbish.  The  democracy  has  no 
more  to  do  with  the  papers  than  it  has  with  the 
peerages.  The  millionaire  newspapers  are 
vulgar  and  silly  because  the  millionaires  are 
vulgar  and  silly.  It  is  the  proprietor,  not  the 
editor,  not  the  sub-editor,  least  of  all  the 
reader,  who  is  pleased  with  this  monotonous 
prairie  of  printed  words.    The  same  slander  on 


TYKANNY  OF  BAD  JOURNALISM    203 

democracy  can  be  noticed  in  the  case  of  ad- 
vertisements. There  is  many  a  tender  old  Tory 
imagination  that  vaguely  feels  that  our  streets 
would  be  hung  with  escutcheons  and  tapestries, 
if  only  the  profane  vulgar  had  not  hung  them 
with  advertisements  of  Sapolio  and  Sunlight 
Soap.  But  advertisement  does  not  come  from 
the  unlettered  many.  It  comes  from  the  re- 
fined few.  Did  you  ever  hear  of  a  mob  rising 
to  placard  the  Town  Hall  with  proclamations 
in  favour  of  Sapolio?  Did  you  ever  see  a  poor, 
ragged  man  laboriously  drawing  and  painting 
a  picture  on  the  wall  in  favour  of  Sunlight 
Soap — simply  as  a  labour  of  love?  It  is  non- 
sense; those  who  hang  our  public  walls  with 
ugly  pictures  are  the  same  select  few  who  hang 
their  private  walls  with  exquisite  and  expensive 
pictures.  The  vulgarisation  of  modern  life  has 
come  from  the  governing  class ;  from  the  highly 
educated  class.  Most  of  the  people  who  have 
posters  in  Camberwell  have  peerages  at  West- 


204  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

minster.  But  the  strongest  instance  of  all  is 
that  which  has  been  unbroken  until  lately,  and 
still  largely  prevails;  the  ghastly  monotony  of 
the  Press. 

Then  comes  that  other  legend;  the  notion 
that  men  like  the  masters  of  the  Newspaper 
Trusts  "give  the  people  what  they  want." 
Why,  it  is  the  whole  aim  and  definition  of  a 
Trust  that  it  gives  the  people  what  it  chooses. 
In  the  old  days,  when  Parliaments  were  free 
in  England,  it  was  discovered  that  one  courtier 
was  allowed  to  sell  all  the  silk,  and  another  to 
sell  all  the  sweet  wine.  A  member  of  the 
House  of  Commons  humorously  asked  who  was 
allowed  to  sell  all  the  bread.  I  really  tremble 
to  think  what  that  sarcastic  legislator  would 
have  said  if  he  had  been  put  off  with  the  mod- 
ern nonsense  about  "gauging  the  public  taste." 
Suppose  the  first  courtier  had  said  that,  by  his 
shrewd,  self-made  sense,  he  had  detected  that 
people  had  a  vague  desire  for  silk ;  and  even  a 


TYRANNY  OF  BAD  JOURNALISM    205 

deep,  dim  human  desire  to  pay  so  much  a  yard 
for  it!  Suppose  the  second  courtier  said  that 
he  had,  by  his  own  rugged  intellect,  discov- 
ered a  general  desire  for  wine :  and  that  people 
bought  his  wine  at  his  price — when  they  could 
buy  no  other!  Suppose  a  third  courtier  had 
jumped  up  and  said  that  people  always  bought 
his  bread  when  they  could  get  none  anywhere 
else. 

Well,  that  is  a  perfect  parallel.  "After 
bread,  the  need  of  the  people  is  knowledge," 
said  Danton.  Knowledge  is  now  a  monopoly, 
and  comes  through  to  the  citizens  in  thin  and 
selected  streams,  exactly  as  bread  might  come 
through  to  a  besieged  city.  Men  must  wish  to 
know  what  is  happening,  whoever  has  the  privi- 
lege of  telling  them.  They  must  listen  to  the 
messenger,  even  if  he  is  a  liar.  They  must  lis- 
ten to  the  liar,  even  if  he  is  a  bore.  The  official 
journalist  for  some  time  past  has  been  both  a 
bore  and  a  liar;  but  it  was  impossible  until 


206  UTOPIA  OF  USUEERS 

lately  to  neglect  his  sheets  of  news  altogether. 
Lately  the  capitalist  Press  really  has  begun  to 
be  neglected;  because  its  bad  journalism  was 
overpowering  and  appalling.  Lately  we  have 
really  begun  to  find  out  that  capitalism  cannot 
write,  just  as  it  cannot  fight,  or  pray,  or  marry, 
or  make  a  joke,  or  do  any  other  stricken  human 
thing.  But  this  discovery  has  been  quite  re- 
cent. The  capitalist  newspaper  was  never  ac- 
tually unread  until  it  was  actually  unreadable. 
If  you  retain  the  servile  superstition  that  the 
Press,  as  run  by  the  capitalists,  is  popular  (in 
any  sense  except  that  in  which  dirty  water  in  a 
desert  is  popular) ,  consider  the  case  of  the  sol- 
emn articles  in  praise  of  the  men  who  own 
newspapers — men  of  the  type  of  Cadbury  or 
Harmsworth,  men  of  the  type  of  the  small  club 
of  millionaires.  Did  you  ever  hear  a  plain  man 
in  a  tramcar  or  train  talking  about  Carnegie's 
bright  genial  smile  or  Rothschild's  simple,  easy 
hospitality?    Did  you  ever  hear  an  ordinary 


TYRANNY  OF  BAD  JOURNALISM  207 

citizen  ask  what  was  the  opinion  of  Sir  Joseph 
Lyons  about  the  hopes  and  fears  of  this,  our 
native  land?  These  few  small-minded  men 
publish^  papers  to  praise  themselves.  You 
could  no  more  get  an  intelligent  poor  man  to 
praise  a  millionaire's  soul,  except  for  hire,  than 
you  could  get  him  to  sell  a  millionaire's  soap, 
except  for  hire.  And  I  repeat  that,  though 
there  are  other  aspects  of  the  matter  of  the  new 
plutocratic  raid,  one  of  the  most  important  is 
mere  journalistic  jealousy.  The  Yellow  Press 
is  bad  journalism:  and  wishes  to  stop  the  ap- 
pearance of  good  journalism. 

There  is  no  average  member  of  the  public 
who  would  not  prefer  to  have  Lloyd  George 
discussed  as  what  he  is,  a  Welshman  of  genius 
and  ideals,  strangely  fascinated  by  bad  fashion 
and  bad  finance,  rather  than  discussed  as  what 
neither  he  nor  anyone  else  ever  was,  a  perfect 
democrat  or  an  utterly  detestable  demagogue. 
There  is  no  reader  of  a  daily  paper  who  would 


208  UTOPIA  OF  USUKERS 

not  feel  more  concern — and  more  respect — for 
Sir  Rufus  Isaacs  as  a  man  who  has  been  a 
stockbroker,  than  as  a  man  who  happens  to  be 
Attorney- General.  There  is  no  man  in  the 
street  who  is  not  more  interested  in  Lloyd 
George's  investments  than  in  his  Land  Cam- 
paign. There  is  no  man  in  the  street  who  could 
not  understand  (and  like)  Rufus  Isaacs  as  a 
Jew  better  than  he  can  possibly  like  him  as  a 
British  statesman.  There  is  no  sane  journalist 
alive  who  would  say  that  the  official  account  of 
Marconis  would  be  better  "copy"  than  the  true 
■  account  that  such  papers  as  this  have  dragged 
out.  We  have  committed  one  crime  against 
the  newspaper  proprietor  which  he  will  never 
forgive.  We  point  out  that  his  papers  are  dull. 
And  we  propose  to  print  some  papers  that  are 
interesting. 


THE   POETRY   OF   THE   REVO- 
LUTION 

Everyone  but  a  consistent  and  contented 
capitalist,  who  must  be  something  pretty  near 
to  a  Satanist,  must  rejoice  at  the  spirit  and 
success  of  the  Battle  of  the  'Buses.  But  one 
thing  about  it  which  happens  to  please  me  par- 
ticularly was  that  it  was  fought,  in  one  aspect 
at  least,  on  a  point  such  as  the  plutocratic  fool 
calls  unpractical.  It  was  fought  about  a  sym- 
bol, a  badge,  a  thing  attended  with  no  kind 
of  practical  results,  like  the  flags  for  which 
men  allow  themselves  to  fall  down  dead,  or  the 
shrines  for  which  men  will  walk  some  hun- 
dreds of  miles  from  their  homes.  When  a  man 
has  an  eye  for  business,  all  that  goes  on  on  this 
earth  in  that  style  is  simply  invisible  to  him. 

209 


210  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

But  let  us  be  charitable  to  the  eye  for  business ; 
the  eye  has  been  pretty  well  blacked  this  time. 
But  I  wish  to  insist  here  that  it  is  exactly 
what  is  called  the  unpractical  part  of  the  thing 
that  is  really  the  practical.  The  chief  difiFer- 
ence  between  men  and  the  animals  is  that  all 
men  are  artists ;  though  the  overwhelming  ma- 
jority  of  us  are  bad  artists.  As  the  old  fable 
truly  says,  lions  do  not  make  statues ;  even  the 
cunning  of  the  fox  can  go  no  further  than  the 
accomplishment  of  leaving  an  exact  model  of 
the  vulpine  paw:  and  even  that  is  an  accom- 
plishment which  he  wishes  he  hadn't  got. 
There  are  Chryselephantine  statues,  but  no 
purely  elephantine  ones.  And,  though  we 
speak  in  a  general  way  of  an  elephant  trumpet- 
ing, it  is  only  by  human  blandishments  that  he 
can  be  induced  to  play  the  drum.  But  man, 
savage  or  civilised,  simple  or  complex  (  always 
desires  to  see  his  own  soul  outside  himself;  in 
some  material  embodiment.    He  always  wishes 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  211 

to  point  to  a  table  in  a  temple,  or  a  cloth  on  a 
stick,  or  a  word  on  a  scroll,  or  a  badge  on  a 
coat,  and  say:  "This  is  the  best  part  of  me.  If 
need  be,  it  shall  be  the  rest  of  me  that  shall 
perish."  This  is  the  method  which  seems  so  un- 
businesslike to  the  men  with  an  eye  to  busi- 
ness. This  is  also  the  method  by  which  battles 
are  won. 

The  Symbolism  of  the  Badge 

The  badge  on  a  Trade  Unionist's  coat  is  a 
piece  of  poetry  in  the  genuine,  lucid,  and  logi- 
cal sense  in  which  Milton  defined  poetry  (and 
he  ought  to  know)  when  he  said  that  it  was  sim- 
ple, sensuous,  and  passionate.  It  is  simple,  be- 
cause many  understand  the  word  "badge," 
who  might  not  even  understand  the  word 
"recognition."  It  is  sensuous,  because  it  is 
visible  and  tangible;  it  is  incarnate,  as  all  the 
good  Gods  have  been;  and  it  is  passionate  in 
this  perfectly  practical  sense,  which  the  man 


212  UTOPIA  OF  USUEERS 

with  an  eye  to  business  may  some  day  learn 
more  thoroughly  than  he  likes,  that  there  are 
men  who  will  allow  you  to  cross  a  word  out 
in  a  theoretical  document,  but  who  will  not  al- 
low you  to  pull  a  big  button  off  their  bodily 
clothing,  merely  because  you  have  more  money 
than  they  have.  Now  I  think  it  is  this  sen- 
suousness,  this  passion,  and,  above  all,  this  sim- 
plicity that  are  most  wanted  in  this  promising 
revolt  of  our  time.  For  this  simplicity  is  per- 
haps the  only  thing  in  which  the  best  type  of 
recent  revolutionists  have  failed.  It  has  been 
our  sorrow  lately  to  salute  the  sunset  of  one 
of  the  very  few  clean  and  incorruptible  ca- 
reers in  the  most  corruptible  phase  of  Christen- 
dom. The  death  of  Quelch  naturally  turns 
one's  thoughts  to  those  extreme  Marxian  theor- 
ists, who,  whatever  we  may  hold  about  their 
philosophy,  have  certainly  held  their  honour 
like  iron.  And  yet,  even  in  this  instant  of  in- 
stinctive reverence,  I  cannot  feel  that  they  were 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  REVOLUTION    213 

poetical  enough,  that  is  childish  enough,  to 
make  a  revolution.  They  had  all  the  audacity 
needed  for  speaking  to  the  despot ;  but  not  the 
simplicity  needed  for  speaking  to  the  democ- 
racy. They  were  always  accused  of  being  too 
bitter  against  the  capitalist.  But  it  always 
seemed  to  me  that  they  were  (quite  uncon- 
sciously, of  course)  much  too  kind  to  him. 
They  had  a  fatal  habit  of  using  long  words, 
even  on  occasions  when  he  might  with  propriety 
have  been  described  in  very  short  words.  They 
called  him  a  Capitalist  when  almost  anybody 
in  Christendom  would  have  called  him  a  cad. 
And  "cad"  is  a  word  from  the  poetic  vocabu- 
lary indicating  rather  a  general  and  powerful 
reaction  of  the  emotions  than  a  status  that 
could  be  defined  in  a  work  of  economics.  The 
capitalist,  asleep  in  the  sun,  let  such  long  words 
crawl  all  over  him,  like  so  many  long,  soft, 
furry  caterpillars.  Caterpillars  cannot  sting 
like  wasps.     And,  in  repeating  that  the  old 


214  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

Marxians  have  been,  perhaps,  the  best  and 
bravest  men  of  our  time,  I  say  also  that  they 
would  have  been  better  and  braver  still  if  they 
had  never  used  a  scientific  word,  and  never 
read  anything  but  fairy  tales. 

The  Beastly  Individualist 

Suppose  I  go  on  to  a  ship,  and  the  ship  sinks 
almost  immediately;  but  I  (like  the  people  in 
the  Bab  Ballads)',  by  reason  of  my  clinging  to 
a  mast,  upon  a  desert  island  am  eventually 
cast.  Or  rather,  suppose  I  am  not  cast  on  it, 
but  am  kept  bobbing  about  in  the  water,  be- 
cause the  only  man  on  the  island  is  what  some 
call  an  Individualist,  and  will  not  throw  me  a 
rope;  though  coils  of  rope  of  the  most  annoy- 
ing elaboration  and  neatness  are  conspicuous 
beside  him  as  he  stands  upon  the  shore.  Now, 
it  seems  to  me,  that  if,  in  my  efforts  to  shout  at 
this  fellow-creature  across  the  crashing  break- 
ers, I  call  his  position  the  "insularistic  posi- 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  REVOLUTION    215 

tion,"  and  my  position  "the  semi-amphibian 
position,"  much  valuable  time  may  be  lost.  I 
am  not  an  amphibian.  I  am  a  drowning  man. 
He  is  not  an  insularist,  or  an  individualist.  He 
is  a  beast.  Or  rather,  he  is  worse  than  any  beast 
can  be.  And  if,  instead  of  letting  me  drown, 
he  makes  me  promise,  while  I  am  drowning, 
that  if  I  come  on  shore  it  shall  be  as  his  bodily 
slave,  having  no  human  claims  henceforward 
forever,  then,  by  the  whole  theory  and  practice 
of  capitalism,  he  becomes  a  capitalist,  he  also 
becomes  a  cad. 

Now,  the  language  of  poetry  is  simpler  than 
that  of  prose ;  as  anyone  can  see  who  has  read 
what  the  old-fashioned  protestant  used  to  call 
confidently  "his"  Bible.  And,  being  simpler,  it 
is  also  truer ;  and,  being  truer,  it  is  also  fiercer. 
And,  for  most  of  the  infamies  of  our  time,  there 
is  really  nothing  plain  enough,  except  the  plain 
language  of  poetry.  Take,  let  us  say,  the  case 
of  the  recent  railway  disaster,  and  the  acquittal 


216  UTOPIA  OF  USURERS 

of  the  capitalists'  interest.  It  is  not  a  scientific 
problem  for  us  to  investigate.  It  is  a  crime 
committed  before  our  eyes;  committed,  per- 
haps, by  blind  men  or  maniacs,  or  men  hypno- 
tised, or  men  in  some  other  ways  unconscious ; 
but  committed  in  broad  daylight,  so  that  the 
corpse  is  bleeding  on  our  door-step.  Good 
lives  were  lost,  because  good  lives  do  not  pay; 
and  bad  coals  do  pay.  It  seems  simply  impos- 
sible to  get  any  other  meaning  out  of  the  mat- 
ter except  that.  And,  if  in  human  history  there 
be  anything  simple  and  anything  horrible,  it 
seems  to  have  been  present  in  this  matter.  If, 
even  after  some  study  and  understanding  of 
the  old  religious  passions  which  were  the  resur- 
rection of  Europe,  we  cannot  endure  the  ex- 
treme infamy  of  witches  and  heretics  literally 
burned  alive — ^well,  the  people  in  this  affair 
were  quite  as  literally  burned  alive.  If,  when 
we  have  really  tried  to  extend  our  charity  be- 
yond the  borders  of  personal  sympathy,  to  all 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  REVOLUTION  217 

the  complexities  of  class  and  creed,  we  still  feel 
something  insolent  about  the  triumphant  and 
acquitted  man  who  is  in  the  wrong,  here  the 
men  who  are  in  the  wrong  are  triumphant  and 
acquitted.  It  is  no  subject  for  science.  It  is  a 
sub j  ect  for  poetry.  But  for  poetry  of  a  terrible 
sort. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  AT  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


NOV  1 0  195(K 
.ntN  4  -  19Sy 


KCTDlDfU 


APR    31973 


Form  L-9-15ni-2,'36 


fim 


UNIVERSITY  OF  (  ALIFO^mA 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 

UBRARY 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  898  377 


/ 


I 


PLEA«{:  DO  NOT  REMOVE 
THIS  BOOK  CARD  j 


^ILIBRARY(:^> 


^•f/OJIWDJO^ 


<^ 


30 


University  Research  Library 


IjJ. 


